Adagia 1201–1300

Athenaeus in book 10, in a discussion of drinking to excess, writes that there was an adage in popular circulation of the form Ἤ πέντε πίνειν, ἢ τρία, ἢ μὴ τέτταρα, Drink either five or three or anything but four. This lays down a standard for the dilution of wine; for the most commonly used proportion in Antiquity was two ladles of water to five of wine or one of water to two of wine. As evidence of this he cites the poet Ion, who told (he says) how a seer once prophesied to Palamedes that the Greeks would have a favourable wind who drank three ladles to one; Nicochares, who in the Amymone has 'Your health in a bumper of five and two;' and Ameipsias 'I Dionysus come to you, / All in the form of five and two.'
A somewhat fuller discussion of this, however, is given by Plutarch in the third decade of his 'Table-talk/ and he is evidence for the occurrence among songs sung at drinking-parties of 'Drink either five or three or anything but four;' so let no one be in a hurry to alter the text of Plautus, where the same thing is on record. And Ariston in the dialogue gives a humorous development. In music, he suggests, the ratio of three to two produces the interval called diapente, and the ratio of two to one that called diatrion; and the one called diatessaron is weaker and more obscure than the others and is formed by the ratio of four to three. It is the same with the intervals in drinking: there are three ratios of wine to water, diapente, diatrion, and diatessaron. The diapente ratio is produced by putting three to two, if three ladles of water are mixed with two of wine. If you mix two and two, you get the double ratio; and the interval will be a diatessaron 'if to one ladle of wine you add three of water. Here you have your ratio of three to two, which is suitable for three magistrates in the city hall, sapient and sober men, or for logicians with furrowed brows, disputing on their favourite knotty points. Again, if you mix two to one, you get the most unruly pitch of all, what Plutarch himself calls ἀκροθώρακα, surface-drunk, "moving the heart-strings that should not be moved," the reason being that this mixture neither leaves a man entirely sober nor lets him drown his folly in strong drink. If however you add two to three, you get (he says) the most harmonious of all proportions, seeing that it induces sleep and encourages relaxation and perfect ease.' After this playful discourse, Plutarch's father added that 'the Ancients gave Jove two nurses, Ite and Adrastia; Juno one, Euboea; Apollo two, Alethia and Corythala; but Bacchus several, because he is a deity who needs to be sobered and tamed by association with a number of Nymphs, and so rendered milder and more civilized.' What he means to convey is that wine should be diluted with plenty of water.
Plautus mentions this adage in the Stichus, where he puts a slaves' drinking-party on the stage: 'But all this time, master chairman, why does this bottle pass so slowly round? Notice how many ladles we are drinking. - As many as you have fingers on one hand. There is an old Greek catch, Drink either five or three or anything but four.' Though this jest in Plautus is not above all suspicion of a flaw in the text. As for the ban in the Greek catch on drinking four, this is connected with a superstition current in Antiquity, which held that odd numbers were in all respects more effective, which Pliny thought was a deduction 'from the observation of days in cases of fever.' With regard to the avoidance of the number four in mixing wine, he also writes as follows in book 28 chapter 6: The number four too is condemned by Democritus in a volume on the subject, and on the reasons why mixtures with four and six ladles are not good to drink.' Horace of course alluded to this in book three of the Odes: 'Quick! Here's to the new moon, here's to midnight, here's to our new augur Murena! Fill, boy, fill! Three or nine ladles in the bowl, just as you please. Your lover of the uneven Muse, your moonstruck poet, may down three times three; more than three is forbidden by the bare-limbed sisterhood of Graces who are afraid of quarrels.' Ausonius too: 'Drink three or three times three: so runs the rule mysterious,' meaning either three ladles, the number of the Graces, or nine, the number of the Muses.

Σικελὸς θάλασσαν, The Sicilian and the sea (we must understand that he is gazing out over it), is used of those who are tempted to expose themselves to some risk a second time. It is said to be derived from a Sicilian who had been shipwrecked when sailing with a cargo of figs. Later he was sitting on the shore surveying the sea, which was so calm and tranquil, it seemed to be inviting him to repeat his voyage; and he is reported to have said 'I know what you want: you want some more figs.' This is recorded by almost all the collectors of Greek proverbs.

Σῦκον αἰτεῖ, He asks for figs, was applied to a man who used flattery in order to get something that he wanted. The source is said to be an old Athenian practice of buttering-up the farmers in order to get the first ripe figs from them, wishing them well and praying that they might have a heavy fig harvest the following year. The country folk however, once they noticed that this display of good will by the city people was simply designed to secure their figs, made a proverb of it, and used to say of anyone who made himself agreeable in hopes of getting some advantage 'It's figs he wants.' Aristophanes in the Wasps: 'But now you ask me for figs.'

Μακρὰν χαίρειν φράσας ταῖς ἐνταῦθα τιμαῖς, Having bidden a long farewell to the honours which are to be had here. The metaphor, when applied to things not people, is unquestionably proverbial. Thus if we give up something, we are said to renounce it and to bid it a long farewell. The image is derived from those who go on a journey with the prospect of being away for a longish time or of never returning. It occurs fairly often in Lucian as well as other authors. Cicero in his Letters to Atticus, book 8: 'But he has bidden a long farewell to all sense of honour and has made for Brindisi.' It is not clear whether he speaks of some philosopher who, though accustomed to say many fine things about honourable conduct, on which he thought himself a great authority, has later more or less abandoned his philosophy and thinks only of himself, or of Pompey, who fled to Greece to escape Caesar, and thought of saving his own skin rather than his reputation. Hippolytus too in Euripides: To your dear Cypris I bid a long farewell.' Lucian uses it in Jupiter tragoedus. Again in his Apology for a Slip of the Tongue in Greeting he explains the proverb in the following words: 'At least, to bid someone a long farewell makes it clear that you will take no further interest in him.'
Cicero in book 15 of his Letters to Friends for 'a long farewell' uses 'to give notice;' 'You are bewitched by the wiles of Pleasure,' he says, 'and have given notice to Virtue.' The idea is much the same when we are said to 'repudiate' or 'renounce' or 'give notice to' anything we abandon with scorn, using a metaphor derived from the legal formula for divorce; it was a custom for the man divorcing his wife to say 'Take your things and go.' So also Gaius in book 24, the second title De Divortiis et Repudiis, in the chapter on divorce: 'In cases of repudiation, which is equivalent to withdrawal, there is an accepted form of words, Take your things and go, and also Manage your own affairs.' These, then, were the words which effected the divorce of a married couple. ('In the dissolution of a contract of betrothal' he continues 'it is established that an act of withdrawal ought to intervene, for which the approved formula is I will not accept your offer.' Thus Alcmena says in Plautus 'Farewell, take your things and go, and give me mine.' Cicero alludes to this in an attack on Antony: 'He became an honest man/ he says: 'He told her to take her things and go.' The phrase 'to give notice' is often used in legal authorities: it is applied equally to both marriage and betrothal, though the formula differs, as I have said. It will give more pleasure when used of things of the mind; for example, if it is reported that someone is quitting life at Court or some other profession, and we say of him 'He has told court life' let us say, or 'classical scholarship to take its things and go.'

Τὰ σῦκα σῦκα, τὴν σκάφην σκάφην λέγων, Calling the figs figs, calling a spade a spade, is an iambic line from the comedies of Aristophanes adapted for use as an adage. It suits a man who speaks the truth in a simple and countrified style, who tells of things as they are, and does not wrap them up in ornamental verbiage. The technical writers on rhetoric describe figures of speech which enable one to clothe obscenities in seemly language, to make rude things sound gentle and proud things modest, and to say biting things so as to win approval. Men of more homely mother-wit speak more crudely and more plainly, and call things by their true names. Lucian in the Jupiter tragoedus: 'For I'm a rustic fellow, as it says in the comedy, and call a spade a spade.' Again, in his How History Should Be Written, he thinks a writer should be uncommitted and incorruptible, reporting things as they really happened, and calling figs figs and a spade a spade. It is also found in another form: I call figs figs and a dough-trough a dough-trough. Aristophanes in the Clouds: 'I'd never give a man a ha'penny / Who called a kardopos a kardopê.' Kardopos means a trough for making bread in. The poet makes Socrates a great quibbler, maintaining that one ought not to use the form kardopon, as used by Cleonymus, but kardopên, as (says he) 'you speak of Sostraten.'

Οἴκοθεν ὁ μάρτυς, A home-grown witness, used when a man praises himself, as though he has evidence under his own roof and not brought in from outside. Witnesses of this sort are usually given very little credit, and they are rejected as suspect by the law. Paulus in book 2 of the Pandects, title De testibus, in the last chapter but one: 'Witnesses produced by the prosecutor from his own household are not acceptable for examination.' Again in book 4 of the Code, in the same title: 'Civil law also rejects the credibility of domestic evidence.' Lucian in his Jupiter tragoedus: 'Excellent! Home-grown evidence, as the saying goes.' It was this that Seneca seems to have had in mind when he wrote in these terms to Lucilius: 'Wait a little and you shall have your recompense from my domestic resources.' (Unless anyone prefer to read dono here for domo: 'you will get your reward by way of gift.')
There are Greek writers who take this adage to apply to those who told lies to start with, and later confess the truth, as though driven to it by conscience, which is the witness in a man's breast. Thus Plutarch calls it 'the internal judge,' which cannot be corrupted. It is not far from this to the phrase in Cicero's De oratore, book 2: 'That third course, to declaim beyond the limits of propriety and beyond his own capacity, is the act of a man who, as you, Catulus, have said of one of these noisy fellows, is collecting as many witnesses as he can of his own folly by the way he advertises his domestic wares.' By advertising his own wares, Cicero meant that he made a public exhibition of himself as a booby. Again, at the beginning of that book: 'At the time, being only boys, we used to disprove what they said with evidence from our home circle, my father and our kinsman Gaius Aculeo, and Lucius Cicero our uncle.' Here he uses the phrase 'evidence from home' quite simply of near relations; and nothing could be nearer or more at home in a man than his own conscience. Cicero again in the second book of his Letters to Friends, in the letter to Caelius that begins Raras tuas: 'That he has had no lack of help from me you yourself can confirm, for Phania is available as home-grown evidence, I suppose.' So I suspect we ought to read, though others had filled the gap in the text with the words 'like the witness in the old play,' unless perhaps for kômikos, in the play, we prefer oikiakos, domestic, home-grown. Further in his speech in defence of Lucius Flaccus: 'Nor will the entire evidence of the Aemonensians, whether fabricated here, as it clearly was, or sent from home, as we are asked to believe, move me in the least.' Terence: 'I make this guess at home.'

The Boeotians had a bad reputation in Antiquity for their stupidity, as I have shown above. As a result, everything pointless and doltish was called Boeotian. Lucian in the Jupiter tragoedus: 'That was a boorish and downright Boeotian remark of yours.' The phrase βοιωτικὸς νοῦς, Boeotian brains, is also found for blockheaded and stupid. Horace in the Epistles: 'You'd swear he was a Boeotian, born in that thick air.' Plutarch, himself a Boeotian, tells us in several other passages, and especially in his essay 'On the Eating of Meat,' that the Boeotians were stigmatized in Athens as being brutish stupid and gross, and this was due to the amount they ate, as I have recorded elsewhere; for they were a people more concerned with bodily exercise than with the culture of the mind. It was from this, according to Stephanus, that some people thought the region derived its name. He also quotes Ephorus as saying that the Athenians were devoted to navigation and the Thessalians to horsemanship, that the strength of the Boeotians lay in their bodily fitness and that of the people of Cyrene in their chariots, and that the Lacedaemonians devoted particular attention to law.

Βοιώτιος νόμος, A Boeotian tune, was used of those who had enjoyed a peaceful and prosperous beginning in some enterprise and then run into trouble and distress. Hence the phrase in Sophocles: 'When any man sings the Boeotian strain.' This arose from a historical event; for the Boeotians at first lived in freedom and peace, and later, after the death of Laius, fell victims to various misfortunes, so that any song they sang might well be thought to have a cheerful beginning and a mournful end. This is cited by Zenodotus. Aristophanes in the Acharnians seems to use it of any rough and unskilled singing: 'In came Dexitheus to sing a Boeotian tune.'

Βοιώτια αἰνίγματα, Boeotian riddles, was applied to oblique allusive statements which could be understood only with the greatest difficulty. It is taken from the story of that Theban monster, the Sphinx. She put a riddle to Oedipus, which ran as follows: 'What is it that has four legs and then two legs and then again three legs?' Oedipus guessed it; he saw it meant a man, who when he is young uses his hands too as if they were feet; then, when he learns to walk properly, supports himself on two legs; and eventually old age adds a stick, like a third leg. An epigram survives which embodies the Sphinx's riddle in the following words:
Earth has a biped and a quadruped
With different voice; a triped too she has.
This only changes shape, what things soe'er
Move o'er the ground or through the sky or sea.
When with most legs it hastens on its way,
Then do its limbs most lose the gift of speed.
Thus it is that Hesiod in the second book of his Georgics calls an old man already bowed with years a three-legged man: 'Then like a mortal that goes on three legs.'

Βοῦν ἐπὶ γνάθοις φέρει, He carries an ox in his mouth, was said in old days of a greedy man, as we learn from Zenodotus and Suidas. It took its rise, as I suppose, either from Theagenes the Thracian athlete or from Milo of Croton, one of whom ate an entire ox single-handed, the evidence for which is a Greek epigram and the authority of Poseidippus cited by Athenaeus; while the other as reported by Theodoras of Hieropolis, also in Athenaeus, lifted a four-year-old bull on his shoulders at the Olympic games, carried it round the stadium, and on the same day ate it single-handed. This story is also mentioned by Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights.

Βοιωτοῖς μεντεύσαιο, Go and prophesy to the Boeotians, is the language of a man who seeks to turn some evil away from him, just as we might say 'Foretell that to our enemies.' 'Madman, go sing that tune to your Dardanian prince,' and 'Let foemen's wives and children feel / The gathering south-wind's angry roar, / The black wave's crash,' and 'Would that such parties might befall my foes!' But it will have more point when directed against a man who prophesies disaster, and we pray that it may fall on his own head. Zenodotus writes that its origin was a historical event, for which he gives Heracleides as his authority. Once upon a time, he says, when the Thebans consulted an oracle about the outcome of a war, the prophetess who in those days gave the responses at Dodona said that they would win the war if they did something wicked. So one of those who had come to consult the oracle seized Myrtile, which was the name of the woman who foretold the future, and threw her into a cauldron of boiling water that happened to be handy. Others say it was a soothsayer named Bombus, who replied to the Thebans, when they asked about the issue of a war, that they would win a signal victory if first they sacrificed one of their generals. However, they killed Bombus himself and sacrificed him; and hence came the proverb.

Ἄρνα προβάλλει, He confronts them with a ram, was used of anyone who wanted to pick a quarrel and fight. In old days those who intended to declare war used to despatch a herald to release a ram, which he had brought with him, into their enemies' territory, by which he signified that their city and their fields would become grazing land for their opponents. The authority is Diogenianus.

Ἀργύρου κρῆναι λαλοῦσιν, The springs of silver speak. This adage was used in criticism of men whose talk was stupid and ignorant, but full of arrogance and self-confidence, because they could rely on their wealth. For the common run of rich men, 'intoxicated with fortune's favours' as Horace puts it, think that one of the privileges of wealth is to have everything they say universally admired and approved forthwith as eloquent and well-informed. Horace put his finger on it, when he wrote: 'Don't you compete with me; / Fool as I am, my riches give me leave,' and again in another passage: 'And whatever he may wish, he hoped would bring him fame, as the result of his own merit.' Here belongs that well-known moral maxim, which has a good deal of point: 'Whom Fortune loves too much, she makes a fool.' And another from Antiphanes, preserved by Stobaeus: 'Wealth's an unskilled physician, and like him / Finds us all sighted, and then makes us blind.' And to the same effect Menander in The Man in Mourning for Himself: 'Riches are blind, and those whose eyes / Are fixed on riches they will render blind.' And another quotation from the same source:
O then indeed is wantonness too proud,
When wealth its captive owner headlong drives
And makes him what he never was before.
I have spoken elsewhere of He has hay on his horns, and Insolence is oft the companion of success. Pindar in the third hymn of his Isthmians: 'If any man is fortunate, either in glorious athletic contests / or in wealth, and possesses, as the saying goes, a magnificent sufficiency, he deserves his share of the plaudits of his fellow-citizens.' This will also suit those people who in reliance on their wealth seem to speak more freely and boldly than they should; for just as poverty breeds timidity, so do riches often bring with them self-confident utterance.

Γῆν πρὸ γῆς ἐλαύνεσθαι, To be driven land beyond land, is a proverbial phrase used of exiles and wanderers and those who stray in uncertainty from one place to another. Aristophanes in the Acharnians: 'And pursue land beyond land.' Again elsewhere: 'But I in trembling flee land beyond land.' Lucian in The False Prophet: 'But he had to endure being driven land beyond land.' In Latin those who are in exile and therefore have to move to another place, are said solum vertere, to change their country. Alciphron in his Letters: 'I shall for choice cut loose and make my escape no matter where, fleeing land beyond land.' Cicero in his Letters to Atticus, book 14: 'This and other things I cannot bear, and so "land beyond land" is in my mind.' He means that he is planning to make his escape.

This is a proverbial exaggeration: when we wish to convey that not one moment of leisure remains, we say that there is not a scrap of spare time in which one could scratch one's ear. Lucian in his Twice accused: Οὐδ᾽ ὅσον κνήσασθαι τὸ οὖς, φασὶ, σχολὴν ἄγων, Without enough leisure, as the saying goes, to scratch one's ear.

Θᾶττον ἄντις ἐν πλοίῳ πεσὼν διαμάρτοι ξύλου, Sooner will wood be out of reach of a man falling down in a ship. A proverbial exaggeration, by which we convey the idea of something so plentiful everywhere that, whichever way you turn, you will find what you seek; for a ship being entirely built of wood, it is impossible for anyone who falls down in a ship not to fall on wood. Lucian in his Twice Accused: 'So that, as the proverb runs, a man who fell in a ship would sooner not fall on wood than your eye fail to see a philosopher, whichever way you look.' Lucian is criticizing the crowd of philosophers, which is so great that everything everywhere seems full of them and it is impossible to get away.

Επισκυθιζεσθαι, To drink like a Scythian. An adage in use among the Spartans for intemperance and the drinking of unmixed wine. Achaeus too, in his satyric play Aethon, uses σκυθιπιεῖν, or, as some copies read, σκυθιστὶ πιεῖν, to drink Scythian fashion, for the drinking of wine unmixed. Athenaeus in book 10 of the Doctors at Dinner, giving Herodotus and Chamaeleo as his authorities, records that Cleomenes the Spartan king, who had many friends among the Scythians and adopted their practice of drinking neat wine, was driven mad; such is the Spartans' explanation. The passage is found in the sixth book of Herodotus, which he called Erato; and he adds that this is the origin of a phrase common in Sparta: when they wish to drink at greater strength than usual, they say episkythison, Scythian fashion, instead of the usual epichyton, pour in the water. In the same author, book 11, Hieronymus of Rhodes maintains that skythisai is used for methysai, be intoxicated; and Athenaeus wonders whether skyphos, a drinking-cup, gets its name from the Scythians, having been originally skythos, for he shows that the word in this altered form is still found in the texts. He also adds that the Spartans, being of the opinion that the barbarians in Asia are invariably untrustworthy, sent Dercyllidas as their representative in place of Thim-bron, because he had none of the straightforward simplicity of a Spartan but was devious and ruthless by nature, and therefore unlikely to be cheated; and for this the Spartans called him skythos or skyphos. The Scythians and Thracians are called 'neat-drinkers'; and this often fills their parties with bloodshed and noise. In the same author, Anacreon, if I am not mistaken, calls akratoposia, the drinking of neat wine, 'Scythian drinking,' and Callimachus has a compound verb for it, zôropotein.
And how one could wish that this more than barbarian custom had been confined to Scythia and Thrace, and had not spread to us! We not only drink to excess; we compel others to drink, and attack a man who refuses with an edged weapon, though it is almost more inhuman to compel a man to drink who is not thirsty than to keep a thirsty man out of reach of drink. As Sophocles elegantly puts it, cited by Athenaeus, book 10: To be forced to drink is as great an evil as to be forced to go thirsty.' This can conveniently be diverted, and applied to intemperance and excess of any kind.

Athenaeus in the same book in a dissertation on drinking tells us that a pithy proverb was in common circulation to the effect that Wine has no rudder, Τὸν οἶνον οὐκ ἔχειν πηδάλια, because there is neither counsel nor moderation in anything that drunkenness either says or does, seeing that it overwhelms the reason, which like a rudder guides and governs sober men. That couplet in Ovid is relevant here: 'Night, Love and Wine no moderate counsels bear: / Night knows no shame, and Wine and Love no fear.' There is a rather charming story in Xenophon, quoted by Athenaeus in his second book. It was forbidden in Persia to bring prochoïds to a dinner-party, a prochoid being evidently some sort of ladle with which the servants poured wine out of the mixing-bowl into the cups. The object of this was to prevent them from losing their mental and physical powers by excessive drinking; and he adds that the custom was still observed in Persia, and no procho'ids were introduced. None the less, he says, they drink so much that they compensate for not bringing them in by being carried out themselves, when they are already unable to leave the party dancing.
This is why drunkenness is nowhere more inexcusable than in those who sit at the helm of a commonwealth, monarchs and magistrates; and the Scriptures forbid the giving of wine to kings. Neither wine nor sleep is proper for those who are in charge of the rudder; yet sometimes no one indulges more than they in wine and sleep.

And again in the same passage he tells us that there was another line in common use as a proverb: 'Wine bids the old man dance, will he or no.' The lesson of this is that there is nothing so foolish or so unsuitable that drink will not incite a man to do it. He also adds another line to very much the same effect: 'Wine makes e'en wisdom into folly fall.' In the fourth book of his Doctors at Dinner he adduces a proverb from a certain Eriphus, a writer of comedies:
There's an old saying (and how true it is!)
That wine, dear father, can persuade old men,
Whether they will or no, to join the dance.
There's a sentence in the first book of Plato's Laws that is relevant here: 'Not only will the old man, as it seems, be a child twice over, but so will the drunkard.' Horace too: 'To make me young again and win me the good graces of some kind Lucanian girl.'

Βατράχοις οἰνοχοεῖς, You pour wine for frogs, was said of a man who offered something for which the recipient of the offer had not the slightest use; if, for example, one were to hold forth at length on philosophy to an ignorant audience. Frogs have no use for wine; they enjoy the water of their marsh much more. The adage is expounded by Zenodotus, Suidas and Diogenianus. Pherecrates in his Coriano, cited by Athenaeus: 'To hell with you! You should be offering wine to frogs.' He is cursing the wine-waiter, who has put two ladles of water into four of wine. From which we may infer that the proverb also applies to those who dilute their wine with excessive quantities of water, till they seem to be drinking water rather than wine, like frogs.

Used perhaps in its literal meaning by Horace: 'Hatched from the self-same egg,' because he is thinking of the myth of Leda, who was got with child by Jove in the form of a swan and brought forth an egg, from which were hatched the twins Castor and Pollux. This egg is said by Pausanias in his account of Laconia to be exhibited in Sparta, hung by ribbons from the ceiling of a temple. If however one were to divert this phrase to apply to children of the same parents or to pupils of the same teacher, or to two people whose characters are so much alike that they might seem to be 'born of the same egg,' no expression could have more of the proverb about it; for instance, if you were to say 'In looks, brains, character and record, and in absolutely everything, these two agree so closely that you could swear they were hatched from the same egg.' Aristotle in book 5 of his On the Generation of Animals shows that it is quite in accordance with nature for two chicks to be hatched from the one egg, and perfect chicks too, provided there is a membrane dividing the yolks; if however they are not separate but are fused together, the result is a monstrous birth.

Ἐξημαξωμένος, Fallen from his chariot. The adage continues in common use down to the present day, applied to a man who forgets what he set out to do and adopts another plan, or who weakens in his resolve, so that he can be described as fallen from his chariot, as one says 'fallen from his ass.' Aristophanes in the Frogs: 'A mind that has fallen from its chariot/ meaning, is wavering in its purpose. Apparently derived from the myth of Phaethon, who according to the story was thrown from his chariot. For the mind is, as it were, the charioteer of the body, and the body is its vehicle. There is also a phrase in Plato about souls fallen from heaven, that they have been 'thrown from their chariots.'

Men who serve no useful purpose are proverbially called 'cyphers/ even by uneducated people in our own day. Aristophanes in the Clouds: 'Blockheads as you are, / Mere cyphers, sheep, a stack of empty jars.' Horace: Mere cyphers we, born to consume the fruits of the earth.' This may be thought a metaphor from the counters on an abacus, which serve no purpose except in adding up. Anacharsis, according to Plutarch, criticized the Athenians for using their money solely as something to count. Though I prefer the theory that cypher is used in the spirit in which they say 'a useless burden on the earth' and 'one of the many' for a member of the common herd. So Horace: I am a little weaker, one of the many,' using the Greek metaphor. And Seneca, in letter 10 of his first book: 'That man is not one of the common herd.' We give the label 'honourable' to men who have nothing of honour in them; they are a crowd, and can only be counted. Hence Horace's 'Mere cyphers we,' and Virgil's Then falls a nameless throng.'

Ἀκροις χρῆσθαι τοῖς ἱστίοις, To use the top of the sail, To use topsails, is a proverbial metaphor, applied to those who are using the greatest efforts and working as hard as they can, or who seize every opportunity. Borrowed from sailors, whose custom is to hoist their sails as high as they can in order to make better speed. Aristophanes in the Frogs: 'Using your topmost sails.' Pindar in the Nemeans, hymn 5: 'Lift up your voice; raise your sails to the sailyard's full height.' The height to which a man raises his sails is dictated by his good or bad fortune.

Ἄκρον λάβε, καὶ μέσον ἕξεις, Grasp the summit, and you will win the halfway. This is the second half of an epic hexameter, used as a proverb when they wished to convey that something was badly expressed and unintelligible, the point being that it deserved particular attention. Zeno-dotus gives the following origin: the people of Aegina had been driven from their native city, and consulted the oracle to know where they should settle. They were given this riddling reply: Grasp the summit, and halfway will be yours; so they seized the top of a certain mountain, and built a settlement half way up. It can also be adapted to another meaning: the lesson is, that we should strive to attain the highest goals, for the result will be that we achieve a middle state. We must fix our minds on the top, so that we may at least achieve halfway; for it usually happens, I know not how, that the results fall short of our hope and the aim we had set ourselves. But nowadays some theologians I could name, pupils of Aristotle, tell us exactly how far it is permissible to aim at riches, to play at hazard, to make war or to seek revenge; though it would be far better to attack the love of riches, war and pleasure in all its forms. The result might then be, that we should be more moderate in our pursuit of them. As it is, while we are content with a middle course, we slip and fall far short of the middle.

Something close to this is reported by Quintilian in book 4 of his Principles of Rhetoric: 'Nor is that popular saying altogether unreasonable that you should ask an unfair share in order to get a fair one.' It might be thought to derive from merchants, who shrewdly offer far less for goods than they're worth and put far too high a price on them, in hopes of getting at least the fair price. This principle was not overlooked by Terence's Syrus, in the Adelphoe, when he plays a trick on Sannio the brothel-keeper, and by demanding that he should hand over the girl to Aeschinus for half the price he was asking, ensures by this ruse that he will accept her capital value in full with great delight and as a special favour. There is also a saying in popular currency to this effect, that the man who tries hard to buy himself a golden chariot will at least get one wheel. I personally think that Seneca was alluding to this in book 7 of the De beneficiis, where he says: 'We make these excessive demands on purpose to bring things back into line. When we say that he ought not to remember it, what we mean is that he ought not to talk about it, and boast, and make himself a burden.' Seneca gives a clear picture of the nature of hyperbole.

Μέχρι τῶν ἀμφωτίδων, Full to both ears, was said of people who drink too much. The metaphor is taken from jars filled right up to their handles. It is to be found in Suidas.

'Ανδραποδώδη τρίχα ἐπιδεικνύειν, To wear a slave haircut, was applied to people of boorish and uncivilized character. It is taken from the practice in Athens of shaving the head of a slave who was to be given his freedom. Plato speaks in the Alcibiades of certain people as having 'a slave-haircut mind,' meaning ignorant and stupid. Suidas cites the following words from an author whose name I do not know: 'When a large crowd of men had collected, whose feelings were deeply roused and who wore a slave haircut, as the saying goes.' Pliny, book 11 chapter 37, recounts as something of a prodigy that some men are born with hairy hearts. 'It is on record' he says 'that some men are born with hairy hearts and that they are of prodigious energy. One such was Aristomenes of Messene, who after killing three hundred Spartans was himself severely wounded and taken prisoner. He made his escape once through a cave in the stone-quarries, threading the narrow tunnels used by foxes; when recaptured, he waited till his guards were overcome with sleep, rolled himself over a fire, and burnt through his bonds, burning his body too in the process; and when he was taken a third time, the Spartans cut open his body out of curiosity, and found he had a hairy heart.'

Ἄμυρις μαίνεται, Amyris is off his head, is a proverbial allegory which we shall find much to the point when someone under a mask of pretended insanity looks after his own interests, or when one man alone foresees a danger and takes timely steps to protect himself, being commonly thought at the time to be off his head; and then the outcome shows that he was the only one to keep his wits about him. So this phrase is useful for anyone who wants to expose the idleness of those who did not take timely steps to protect themselves, or who did not begin to learn sense until they had already suffered damage. Zenodotus says it is derived from an incident on the following lines. At a time when the people of Sybaris were rich and prosperous, they sent someone to Delphi to enquire of the oracle about their future prospects. The reply was that Sybaris would suffer a reversal of fortune, when they began to hold men in more honour than the gods. It happened some time after that a slave who was being flogged by his master took sanctuary in vain at the altars of the gods, but when he took refuge at his master's family monument, his punishment was remitted, as I have recounted elsewhere. Amyris no sooner saw this than he got all his possessions together and emigrated to the Peloponnese, leaving the rest of the people of Sybaris to laugh at him as a lunatic. Later, his pretended insanity was thought something wonderful, and gave rise to a proverb. This is cited by Eustathius on the second book of the Iliad, and also in the rhetorical dictionary of Pausanias. He adds that some call the man Thamyris, others Amyris without the initial theta. It is human nature to give a prophet no credit and no honour, until we are already in the grip of the actual evils he foretold. In the same way Cassandra in some tragedy or other, quoted by Plutarch, speaks as follows: 'When the blow falls and evils overwhelm them, /I am called wise; but now they think me mad.'

Those who held forth or recited as a means of self-advertisement were given the unflattering names of Sophocleses or Laudiceans. Apparently the adage came into being in the time of the younger Pliny, whose words I will give at some length to make the meaning of the proverb more intelligible. In one of his letters he is criticizing the ridiculous arrogance and ambition of some of the young men as shown in their conduct in court. 'Before my time, to use an old man's phrase,' he writes, 'there was no place for young men even of the highest rank, unless some ex-consul introduced them. Such was the respect in which such a very distinguished profession was held. Nowadays all the barriers of modesty and reverence are down, and it is free for all. No introducing them; they burst in. They are followed by an audience of the same class as the speakers, a hired claque. It is a business arrangement made in open court, and money changes hands there as openly as it might across the dinner-table; they pass from one court to the next at the same fee. So some wag called them Sophocleses, and in Latin too they were given the name of Laudiceans.' These are Pliny's words. Both names mark those who would rather be called and thought to be good speakers than speak well. The name Sophocles in Greek comes from sophos, wise, and kleos, honour, and they deliberately misinterpreted it to come from sophos, wise, and kaleisthai, to be called. There is thus a neat allusion here to the name of the great tragedian, and another in the name of Laudicean1 to the people of Laodicea.

Macrobius in his Saturnalian Feast: 'What do you suppose was the origin of that very arrogant proverb that is current nowadays, "We have as many enemies as we have slaves"? We do not "have" these enemies; we make them.' Seneca too mentions it in Letter 47; and it looks as though Macrobius had stolen his wording, for he is a proper drone where all other authors are concerned. The purport of the adage is that we should not trust people, nor suppose them to be our true friends, whose motive for their services is fear. Plato reads us the same lesson in the sixth book of the Laws, on the ground that a slave's feelings cannot possibly be uncorrupted; Jupiter, says Homer, has taken away half the wits of those whom he has subjected to slavery. True love is the foster-child of liberty, and he who fears must hate; and so some kind of natural hatred towards their masters seems to be implanted in all slaves. The adage will also fit any princes who hold despotic rule over their subjects. Plato's words run as follows: Tor there is nothing sound or healthy in the spirit of a slave, nor should a sensible man put any trust in them. As the wisest of poets puts it, 'Far-seeing Jove robs those of half their wits / On whom the day of slavery has descended.'
That is how the lines are quoted by Plato. In Odyssey* 16 however they run differently, in fact as follows: 'Far-seeing Jove robs men of half their valour / When once the day of slavery comes upon them.' Asinius Capito, as cited by Festus Pompeius (for he too alludes to the proverb), thinks that it is more likely to have been originally 'We have as many slaves as we have enemies,' because defeated and captured enemies are reduced to slavery; whence the Latin word for them is mancipia, taken by force.

An answer given long ago by an oracle to the Spartans passed into a proverb: Καλούμένος τε κἄκλητος θεὸς παρέσται, God will be there whether you summon him or no. A use will be found for this when we wish to convey that something we have not sought for or taken trouble to secure will happen all the same, whether we will or no, old age, for example, or death or punishment for our misdeeds. Horace alludes to this in the Odes:
No messenger of Orcus, bribed by gold,
Brought back Prometheus, cunning though he was,
Proud Tantalus he holds and all his line.
Yet to the toiling poor, whose work is done,
Summoned or no, he comes and brings relief.
Terence too was perhaps thinking of this in the Eunuchus: That there may always be a place for me, invited or uninvited.'

Ἐπιῤῥεῖ τὸ ἐξαντλούμενον, What is ladled out flows back again. When someone expends his labour on some project in vain. Lucian in The Sects: 'For, as the proverb has it, the labour that you ladle out flows back again -the con verse of the Danaids' great jar.' He speaks of the study of philosophy: work at it as hard as you like, yet there is always something left to keep you busy and one task leads on to another; as Sophocles puts it, 'Toil upon toil breeds toil.' Zenodotus lists a proverbial line to this effect: 'While one we ladle out, in flows another,' taken from sailors vainly emptying out the bilge water when their ship is holed, because as much water as they can get away flows through the leaks. Plato seems to have had this proverb in mind in the seventh book of the Laws: 'What then when some great increase flows in?' This must be the passage adduced by Athenaeus in book 5 of his Doctors at Dinner: 'For to use the words of Plato himself, a crowd of such gorgons comes upon me.' Seneca in book 2 of his On Anger: 'Surely the man whose ship is letting in a lot of water everywhere, as the seams give way, does not lose patience with the sailors and the ship herself? No, he tackles the danger, shuts out one flow of water and bales out another, stops up visible leaks, and fights relentlessly against the hidden leaks which let in water unperceived. He does not relax his efforts simply because as much as he bales out comes in again.' In Athenaeus, book 4, when one dish of lentils at a dinner-party is promptly followed by another, someone recalls the proverb with the words 'We had ladled out the lentils and they flow back again.' It is not at variance with 'the arse that beats all efforts.'

Αὐλητου βίον ζῇς, You live the life of a flute-player, was a taunt levelled at a man who lived in great comfort, but at other people's expense. Flute-players were employed in the old days at sacrifices, and so they were habitually present at those grand dinners enjoyed by the priests, and what is more, they had nothing to pay. Aristotle, if I am not mistaken, was thinking of men of this class when he enquired in his Problems why it is that as a rule those connected with the stage are hardly ever respectable. He gives three reasons: either their professional skills absorb a great part of their lives and they have no time to spare for the principles of philosophy, or they live a life of unbroken luxury and self-indulgence, or their poverty by itself drives them to vice. The problem is referred to by Gellius in book 20 of his Attic Nights. Flute-players who had withdrawn from Rome to Tibur are the subject of a story in Livy, in book 9 of his first decade. 'When they could not make them change their minds,' he says, 'they brought pressure to bear with a stratagem not out of character for the sort of men they are. On a festival they invited the flute-players to dine at different houses in the expectation of a good dinner with music; they plied them with wine, to which that sort of person is much addicted, until they fell asleep; then loaded them in their stupor into wagons and carried them off to Rome. Nor did they come to their senses until nightfall found the wagons abandoned in the Forum, full of men recovering from their debauch.' Recorded by Diogenianus and Suidas.
Plautus uses 'a life of pure music' for a life of pleasure and idleness. Terence had the same thing in mind: 'See the results of idleness and eating other men's food.' Similarly Alexis in his Dying Together, cited by Athen-aeus: 'So sweet it is to eat other men's food.' And a quotation he gives from Theopompus: 'Euripides' remark was not far wrong: / The happy man is always out to dinner.'

The cruelty of the Scythians became proverbial in Greek: when they wanted to convey that something was boorish or barbarous and ferocious, they called it 'Scythian.' This occurs in several places in Lucian, among them in the Dialogues of Courtesans, in the conversation between Chelidonium and Drosa: The rest is in real Scythian language.' She means that at the end of the letter there was some trace of kindness, but the rest of it was completely inhuman. Some see the origin of this in the reply which the Scythians made to King Darius, which was simply klaiein, 'Go away and howl.' And this word by itself became proverbial: we tell people we scorn to 'go away and howl.' Aelian in the Letters: 'You can take this as your answer, the Scythian answer they call it. I am mad and I talk sense, and I hate the whole human race.' Diogenes Laertius in his Lives of the Philosophers thinks this proverb arose from the rough language of Anacharsis; for he was a Scythian by birth, and was ranked at Athens among famous philosophers. But the most likely explanation is that given by Athenaeus, book 12, that the Scythians, who in old days enjoyed wealth and luxury, reached such a pitch of cruelty that when they invaded another tribe, they cut off the tip of the nose of all the men; while their wives tattooed the bodies of the Thracian wives with large needles, and in short all the people who came their way suffered the most pitiable servitude. Hence later times derived the proverbial expression 'a Scythian order' or 'command,' and aposkythisai meant 'to scalp' your enemies, Which Stephanus tells us as well as Athenaeus. Finally, it looks as though skythrôps and skythrôpos for 'fierce,' 'gloomy,' 'austere' or 'truculent' derived from the Scythian character, and skyzesthai, 'to be angry,' because this tribe is exceptionally prone to anger.

Δέχεται καὶ βῶλον ἀλήτης, Half a hexameter line, used habitually of those who scorn nothing and refuse nothing, but take in good part whatever they are offered, however small it may be. Nor will it be out of place when used also of men in great poverty, who gratefully accept anything from any source, in hopes of working their way up into easier circumstances. The origin of the adage is traced to the following incident. A man called Aletes, who had been exiled from Corinth, attempted with encouragement from an oracle to return to his native land. On his way he fell in with a countryman, from whom he begged for some food. The man, to make a mock of him I suppose, picked up a clod of earth and offered him that. Aletes accepted it as a good omen, and said 'A wanderer is thankful even for a clod of earth.' This Aletes is also mentioned in his book on Corinth by Pausanias.
Plutarch in the 'Problems' tells a story not wholly unlike this, from which the proverb might be thought to derive. The Emanians, he says, after changing their place of abode several times, at length came upon a piece of ground near Inachus, which at that time was held by the people of Inachus and the Achaeans. Now an oracle had been published to the effect that if any people should have received them into their territory, those former inhabitants would lose it all, while if the new arrivals should have received any part from willing donors, they would retain possession of the whole; so a certain Temo, one of the Emanians who was intelligent and shrewd, took up a satchel and disguised himself as a beggar and made his way to join the people of Inachus. There he asked for food, and the king, to raise a laugh by making game of him, gave him a clod of earth. He put it into his satchel and, pretending to be quite satisfied, made off at once out of the king's presence without begging any further. This surprising result, and some memory of the oracle, put the older counsellors on their guard, and they went to the king and advised him by no means to take the man's visit lightly or let him out of his power. Temo detected this, and took refuge in flight, making his escape secretly after vowing a public sacrifice and appealing for help to Apollo. The Emanians then joined battle with the Achaeans and Inachians, put them to flight, and seized their territory. Such, more or less, is Plutarch's story. So the adage will also be suitable for those who undertake some major enterprise and do and suffer anything in order some day to achieve their goal.

An exaggeration that has become proverbial, Noisier than Stentor. Juvenal: 'Loud enough to outdo Stentor himself.' Taken from the story of Stentor, mentioned in the fifth book of the Iliad by Homer, who gives him 'a voice of iron,' in the sense of 'louder than all others.' 'Like to bold Stentor with his iron voice, / Shouting as loud as fifty lesser men.' Greek has a word for such people: megalophônoi, bawling.

Lucian in the Hermotimus writes Ἄπαντας ἐν κύκλῳ περιελθὼν, If you were to make a round tour of them all; and the phrase must surely be proverbial, for it is still in use to this day among uneducated people in the sense of 'all to a man,' with no exceptions. Latin too used ambire, to go round, for canvassing individuals, and obire provinciam, to make the rounds of a province [for taking up the administration] because the man who undertakes the administration must show his face everywhere. It will be more elegant if applied to things of the mind; for instance, if you were to say that in making a decision one should make a round tour of all the arguments for and against.

It is best to profit by another man's madness is cited expressly as a proverb by the elder Pliny in book 18 chapter 5 of his Natural History. 'It points in the same direction' says Pliny 'when he states that a farmer ought to be a ready seller; that in his youth he should plant up his farm without loss of time, but should not build until his land is all planted, and even then he should be in no hurry. It is best, as the popular saying goes, to profit by another man's madness, but to make sure, all the same, that the upkeep of the buildings will not be a burden.' So much for Pliny. Pliny the Younger says the same thing in so many words in his Letters, writing about the follies of Regulus, a man whose ambition made him ridiculous, but not incapable of arousing an interest in intellectual things. The point of the adage is that we should learn caution ourselves from other men's mistakes and prudence from the risks run by others: other men's folly should be our opportunity to learn wisdom. There is a line in common currency to this effect: 'Happy is he who learns caution from the risks run by others.' Cicero writes in one of his letters that it is nice to amend one's own way of life by learning from other people's mistakes. Plautus too has: 'Wisdom's a bargain when bought at other men's expense.' And then there is a proverbial line something like this (one of Publius', I should guess): 'By others' faults the wise correct their own.' And Demea in Terence says one should 'take example by others.' It can also be taken in this sense: we can say that someone uses another man's madness, who profits by the misfortunes of others while remaining safe and sound himself; for no pleasure costs less, and none is more enjoyable. The source of this might well be that scene in a tragedy by Sophocles called Ajax with Scourge in Hand, where Ajax, who had lost his reason, was boasting that he had destroyed his enemies, when he had only spent his rage on flocks and herds. Pallas invites Ulysses to survey the scene in the words 'No laugh so sweet as laughing at one's foes.'

Of something inevitable. Livy, in book 4 of his first decade: 'Necessity that last and greatest weapon, gives you the advantage.' Cicero in his book On Friendship: 'Not that one should be careless of reputation, and one must reckon the goodwill of one's fellow-men as no trivial weapon in the conduct of affairs.' The same adage is used somewhere by the elder Pliny. We find several times in Livy 'Another weapon will be found to deal with this,' and 'This was their principal weapon in attempting this.' So that 'weapon' seems to stand for policy and strategy and method of handling business, the image being taken perhaps from huntsmen, who use their weapons against the quarry which they wish to capture. Hence ways of acting which never disappoint one can be called 'unfailing weapons.'

Ανάγκῃοὐδὲ θεοὶ μάχονται, Necessity even the gods cannot resist. This aphorism is ascribed to Simonides, and is taken from Homer. Plato records it in two places in the Laws, in books 7 and 5: 'The man who first put God into a proverb must have thought of this when he said that God himself is never seen to fight against fate.' And again in the Symposium: 'The gods themselves had much to suffer, so it is said, from the rule of Necessity.' Again in book 5 of the Laws he writes that even the gods cannot bring force to bear upon Necessity.' Livy: 'We must obey Necessity, whom the gods themselves cannot overcome.' Palladius: 'Necessity knows no holidays.' Euripides in the Helen: 'Not mine the saying; 'tis a wise man's word: / Nought has more power than dread Necessity.' In Greek there is a proverbial line: 'All things Necessity soon makes her slaves.' Euripides in the Hecuba: 'Hard is Necessity.' Horace: 'If harsh Necessity into their crowns / Fixes quite fast her adamantine nails.' The poets make Necessity a goddess, mother of the Fates, who are in their turn called inescapable and inexorable. This Necessity is called Fate by philosophers, and she is the eternal succession of events that necessarily form an unbroken chain. Jupiter seems to yield to this, when he says in Virgil that 'Fate will find a way.' And some tragic poet quoted by Seneca: 'Fate draws the willing, but the unwilling drags.'

Σκίλλας ἀπὸ σήματος τίλλειν, To pluck squills from a grave. People were told to do this who did not seem quite right in the head, for squills, seaplants, were used in Antiquity as a remedy for this complaint. Theocritus in the Bucolics: 'Off with you! Gather squills from some old hag's grave.' The suggestion is that the defeated candidate in the singing-contest is so angry at his failure, he is in some danger of losing his reason. And the other character replies in similar vein: 'Be off then and plant cyclamen in the river Haleis.' Dioscorides shows in book 2 that cyclamen is what the Romans called turnip, and was a specific for reducing phlegm in the head. Among other remedies for this complaint he also records that the juice of it was mixed with honey and inserted into the nostrils, and wool soaked in this was wrapped round a finger to purge bile in the head. Its root is cut up small, he says, and kept in store as squills are kept. It is then pounded and made up into pellets, and is a valuable antidote for the dangerous drugs called in Greek love-philtres.

Cicero in the second book of his On the Definitions of Good and Evil: 'What if the memory of misfortunes past is actually pleasant? - granting that some proverbs may be nearer the truth than your philosophical principles; for it is a common saying that past labour is pleasant.' The adage clearly takes its rise from human nature; all men have the same inborn faculty for finding it pleasant to remember past misfortunes or dangers in tranquillity and pass them in review, especially great blows of fate and experiences which have no associations of discredit, such as wars and shipwrecks and other perils of the kind. Thus Horace tells how 'long-winded seamen with their shaven polls / Rejoice, their perils o'er, to tell the tale.' This proverb, which started from the Homer as its source, is used by different later writers in various ways. It is to be found in Homer in book 15 of the Odyssey: 'We two at ease reclined, eating and drinking, / Shall cheer each other with sad tales of old; / For even sorrows bring a man some joy / Who has borne much and wandered far and wide.' This passage, and the proverb, are cited by Aristotle in the first book of the Rhetoric, where he lists what every man by nature finds pleasant or unpleasant. Virgil, emulating Homer, writes 'One day, perchance, this memory will be sweet.' Seneca too in his tragedies: 'What was hard to suffer is sweet in the remembrance.' There is also an iambic line current in Greek, to this effect: 'Sweet to the wise are memories of toil.' Cicero seems to indicate that it was taken from Euripides: 'Euripides' he says 'puts it well (I will make Latin verse of it if I can, for you all know the line in Greek), Suavis est laborum praeteritorum memoria Sweet is the memory of labours past.' The line scans, if for the traditional suayis you write suave, unless your prefer in the archaic fashion to elide the final s or (the simplest solution) to delete est, unless you prefer to put it after laborum.

Cicero in his speech in defence of Murena, comparing legal specialists and practising counsel, says: 'And so it seems to me that most people at the outset much preferred this alternative, and later, when it had proved to be beyond their reach, they settled for the other, just like those Greek musicians (so the saying goes) who are flute-players because they have not proved good enough to play the lyre; in the same way we see some men who have not been able to shine as practising counsel, and relapse into the study of the law.' Such are Cicero's words; and we shall use the phrase to good effect of those who would rather be thought of some importance in a much inferior role than be overlooked among men of distinction. This is like Julius Caesar, who said he would rather be the leading man in some dormant small town than take second place in Rome. Nor will it be a bad fit for those who apply themselves to humble tasks in despair of greater things. The same adage is cited in the Decreta from Augustine, as applied to bad monks who lapse into the common crowd of secular clergy.

Τὸν κολοφῶνα ἐπέθηκεν, He added the colophon. This came to be used when the finishing touch is added to something, or when some addition is made without which a piece of business cannot be concluded. The origin of the adage is pointed out by Strabo in book 4 of his Geography, where he says that the people of Colophon in old days had such a powerful navy, and with it an advantage in cavalry so great, that whenever a war was being waged without hope of a decision, it was the aid of the cavalry of Colophon that finished it off. Hence came the current proverb, He added the colophon. The proverb is recorded by Diogenianus.
Festus Pompeius makes another suggestion, when he says that the word colophon was commonly used to convey that something was finished, though I think the passage is not free from error. In this sense it is used by Plato in the second book of the Laws: 'And so to the use of drunkenness let us first put a colophon' (though for chreia, use, we find in Plato's text choreia, dancing, for he was speaking of dancing previously), and a little further on: 'Let this, my friends, if you agree, be the colophon we set to our discussion on wine.' And in his third Letter to Dionysius: 'And you have set a most ambitious colophon, my good sir, on all your promises.' Again in the Theaetetus: To this I impose as a colophon that famous golden chain.' Socrates' point is that by the 'golden chain' Homer meant the Sun, by whose motion all things are preserved, and they will come to an end at once if he stands still. This is thus his principal argument to prove that all things are corrupted by standing still and preserved by motion, and so he calls it his colophon. Aristides too in his Themistocles: 'And then as a colophon to the argument.' Plutarch in the essay 'On Music' (though the style almost cries aloud that it is not his): These lines then, my dear teacher, I have made the colophon for my remarks on music.' Plutarch again, in the essay 'On the Cleverness of Animals', uses another word, koryphê, when he says 'But that my argument may apply the finishing touch to itself and come to an end.' Gregory the Theologian in the piece he wrote on his exile has 'Now I come to the very colophon of what I have to say.'
Some tell us that the proverb is used of ultimate disasters, and that is how it seems to be used by Chrysostom in a letter to Innocent, bishop of Rome. Hesychius tells us that colophon sometimes means a jackdaw, because, I suppose, a bird is often fixed on the topmost ridge of a house, as if to warn men, like Hesiod's crow, to build themselves nests because it will not always be summer. Latin also uses apicem imponere, to set a cap or crown on something. Cicero in his Cato major: The crown of old age is the influence it can exert.' Further details may be found under a proverb I have recorded elsewhere, Colophonium suffragium. Coronidem addere I have touched on elsewhere.

Οὐ σχολὴ δούλοις, Slaves have no leisure, is recorded by Aristotle in the seventh book of the Politics. Taken from the status of slaves, who are allowed no leisure by their masters; in fact, they actually give them a little more work than they can manage, so that meanness in rewarding them is matched by a lavish allocation of work to be done. It will be used of those whose social status subjects them to the meaner sort of obligation, and who therefore have no leisure to devote themselves to honourable studies. For the liberal arts are so called because they were pursued by the free-born, who alone possessed both free time and resources. It will also be quite elegant if applied to bad men, whose natures are so dominated by vice that they cannot master the noble arts. Nothing is more fully occupied than a slave's life, and no slavery is heavier than that of the man who is the slave of his own vices, particularly because he has so many masters, and masters who differ greatly among themselves, and so never give him the same orders. For if laziness ever bids him 'sleep till the depths of noon,' greed tells him the opposite: he must be down at the docks by daybreak; meanness orders him to be economical, and love says 'Be extravagant.' Thus the wise man alone is free, and he alone leads a life of leisure.

Τιτᾶνας καλεῖς, You summon the Titans. When a man distrusts his own powers and begs others to help him. Taken from the fable of the Giants, which tells how Jupiter feared for his throne in Olympus and summoned the Titans to help. In early Latin, according to Nonius Marcellus, this was expressed by another proverbial metaphor, quiritari, taken from the Roman custom, when violently assaulted, of summoning your fellow-citizens, the Quirites as they were called. The adage is recorded by Diogenianus. The image will be more elegant if its straightforward sense is left behind; for instance, if a theologian were unable to defend his position out of Scripture and had recourse to arguments from philosophy, he is 'asking help from the Titans.'

Πομφόλυξ ὁ ἄνθρωπος, Man is but a bubble. The lesson of this proverb is that there is nothing so fragile, so fleeting and so empty as the life of man. A bubble is that round swollen empty thing which we watch in water as it grows and vanishes in a moment of time. Thus Marcus Terentius Varro in the preface to his book on agriculture: 'Bearing in mind' he says 'that I must make haste; for if, as they say, man is but a bubble, much more is this true of an old man. My eightieth year reminds me to pack my baggage, before I bid farewell to life.' Lucian too in his Charon makes men's lives something very like this kind of bubble: some vanish at once as soon as they are born, some last a little longer, but all of them at very brief intervals take the place of others. Nor could one think of anything, in fact, which would give a better picture of the utter nothingness of this life of ours. Consider first what risks we run when we see the light of day. How destitute, how much exposed to great perils is our infancy! How fleeting is our adolescence! How our prime hastens by! Aristotle in the Politics and again in book 3 of the Rhetoric states that a man's bodily powers begin to fade about his thirty-fifth year and his mental powers about his forty-ninth. Hippocrates brings the peak of a man's life to an end at forty-nine; and if you deduct childhood and old age from the sum of life, just think how little will be left, and that little beset with such great emergencies. Unnumbered kinds of sickness threaten us every day, and no fewer are the mishaps to which we are exposed, collapsing houses, poison, shipwreck, war, earthquakes, landslides, lightning, anything. One man is suffocated by swallowing a grape-pip, another strangled by drinking a hair in a cup of milk. There are cases of men meeting sudden death, when an icicle hardened by frost has fallen from a roof. And this is the same creature that sets such commotions afoot, and for whose appetites this world is too narrow.
I cannot refrain from transcribing at this point a passage from book 7 of Pliny, where he skilfully depicts the frailty and shortness of our life. 'Fragile truly and uncertain is this gift, such as it is, that nature gives us; brief and niggardly is our portion, even for those who get the most generous share, at any rate if we consider the whole span of time. In fact, if we take account of the nights spent in slumber, each man is alive for no more than half of his allotted term, and an equal portion is spent in a state like death, or is punishment if one cannot sleep. Nor does this take account of the years of infancy, which have no sense, nor of old age when long life is a punishment; all the dangers of many kinds, the sickness, fears, anxieties, the appeals to death, so frequent that it is the most common object of prayer. Nature indeed has given men nothing more precious than shortness of life. The senses fail, the limbs are tormented, our sight hearing and walking before we fail ourselves, and so do our teeth and the organs by which we feed. Yet all this time is counted as a part of life.'
The comparison with bubbles finds a parallel in Homer's famous image of the leaves falling from the tree. These are the words of Glaucus in Homer, in the sixth Iliad:
Like leaves upon the tree, the life of man:
One race of leaves the wind strews on the ground
And another the wood puts forth at the call of spring.
These lines, so Diogenes Laertius tells us, were a particular favourite with Pyrrho the Academic philosopher. Homer again, in Iliad 21:
Like leaves, they now are green and flourishing,
Eating earth's plenty, and now they fall and die.
And in another passage, I forget where: Tor earth breeds nothing less robust than man.' Menander, cited by Plutarch in his 'Consolation addressed to Apollonius':
Hear the whole tale in brief: you are a man.
No creature climbs so quickly to the heights,
Changes, and sinks again into the depths
And rightly so for, weakest as he is
Of living things, he takes great tasks in hand.
Euripides, cited in the same author: 'Happiness is not steadfast; it lasts but for a day. One day tears down what yesterday exalted, and raises the low on high.' In that same passage Demetrius of Phalerum is said to have criticized the poet, otherwise renowned for the elegance of his style, on the ground that instead of 'one day' he ought to have written 'a print of time.'
Pindar outdid even the image used by Homer, for he called mankind not 'leaves' but 'a shadow in a dream.' The passage will be found in the eighth hymn of the Pythians: 'Creatures of a day, what is anyone? What no one? Man is a shadow in a dream.' Nothing is as empty as a shadow, for it appears to be something, and is nothing; but he has found what is emptier even than that, a shadow in a dream. As a result, no one can say 'This man is somebody,' or its opposite, 'This man is nobody'; for so sudden are the changes in human affairs that the man who seems to be something the next moment is nobody, and he who seemed to have perished is in a moment somebody. Aeschylus, in a fragment preserved by Stobaeus, makes man's life like the shadow of smoke: The seed of man thinks thoughts that last a day, / No more to be trusted than the shadow of smoke.' Sophocles too in the Ajax: 'Man is but wind and shadow, nothing more.'
Pindar in the eleventh hymn of the Nemeans: 'If a man is rich, and in bodily grace surpasses others, and if by victory in the games he has shown heroic strength, let him remember that the limbs he bears round with him are mortal, and that he must be clad in earth, the end to which all men come.' This truth might properly be written up in the courts of princes, on their drinking-cups and in their tapestries and their banners, rather than such boastful words as 'He can that will' and 'Further yef and other things of the kind.
But nothing can be more exquisite than the well-known comparison between roses, which open so quickly and so quickly grow old and die, and the life of man. A poem survives under Virgil's name which, though it does not particularly recall Virgil's style of writing, is yet so full of elegance and charm that it clearly stems from some author who was not only a polished scholar but, whoever he was, a very gifted man.
Here too belongs that myth beloved of poets, which depicts all mortals as suspended from threads spun by the Fates, and when those threads are cut, down they fall forthwith. Some too hang from white threads and some from threads of a mornful hue, some hang high in air and some near the ground, but all have the same lot: the moment Atropos, who hears no man's prayer, snaps a thread with her thumb, down falls the man who hung from it, nor is any distinction made except that the man who hung higher makes more disturbance when he falls. You may smile, and think is a mere fable, a game that poets play. A game it may be, but pitiless and cruel is the game played by the Fates. And if they would but confine it to ordinary ineffectual men who are covered by Homer's phrase 'a useless burden on the earth,' and would not take from us before their time men gifted by heaven and the very best of our princes! It is not merely that they do not refrain from playing their unprincipled game even with such as these; they seem to lie in wait for them of set purpose as though they were jealous of their power and meant to leave no doubt that this is within its range, and to make it clear that every mortal, whoever he may be, is equally nothing but a bubble.
What a loss the world of letters lately suffered, when early death snatched from us Paolo Canal, patrician of Venice, a young man scarcely yet twenty-five years old but, in heaven's name, so gifted, so prolific, with such keen judgment, such ready utterance, such knowledge of every language and of every subject! Inexorable Fate thought it not her business if she inflicted such a loss on humane studies, to which he had already begun to contribute so effectively, or if she left such a sense of bereavement in the devotees of good literature by suddenly cutting off that great harvest and the high hopes of scholars everywhere.
And now there is the unexpected death of my Prince Philip of which I cannot speak, so bitter is my sorrow for his loss, yet it is not right for me, prompted by such a context, to say nothing of one who showed me such outstanding generosity. Of all the princes upon whom the Sun ever shone he was unique, the best, the greatest, the most gifted. Fortune gave the world a glimpse of him, and, alas, it was only a glimpse and she snatched him away. Whether natural endowments or the splendours of exalted rank, what can heaven give to mortals which was not his in highest excellence and greatest plenty? Physically of heroic stature, how noble, and yet how winning, was his air, and how bright his eye! His was a happy disposition, vigorous health and strength, a noble stance and bearing. Of his distinguished ancestry why need I speak? Kings, emperors, famous captains are to be found in it in such plenty, that nothing could be imagined so grand, so illustrious and so noble. With these there went some secret heaven-sent power, which acted like a magnet, and won him instantly the affection of kings and peoples, of his own nation and of foreigners and, in a word, of all mankind, so that not merely to see him or to talk with him, but even the sound of Philip's name, somehow aroused exceptional goodwill. And could the greatest prince hope for a happier gift than that? This charm, which was part of his destiny, was enhanced by his singular courtesy and flexibility of manner, such that all kings and all nations were remarkably unanimous in their affection for him, and even those who were at war not long before, were equally zealous, once they had laid down their arms, in doing honour to Prince Philip. Such were the universal peace and concord, the gratitude and joy, wherever he had sown the light of his countenance. Well might the generals of Antiquity and classical triumphs seem of no account to anyone which all those kings, princes and nations - France, Savoy, Spain, Germany, England - competed with one another in contributing to those two expeditions into Spain. Anyone who had contributed anything to Philip's glory felt that he had much enhanced his own. On all this my Panegyricus is there to testify. Then there is the wife who has borne him a family, his children all alive and well, his father (to put limitless glory in a single word) Maximilian. There are all those kings closely bound as well by ties of kinship; the greatness of the empire in which he was born and the wealth of the kingdom to which he was summoned, the succession to his father's majesty, and all the great hopes inspired by the gifts, the destiny and the character that were his - hopes that were sure and certain, had heaven been willing to allow any certainty in mortal affairs. The success he had already enjoyed was very great, and all the greater because it did not come, as it does to most men, through violence and bloodshed and the sufferings of others; for there is scarcely any other way to acquire supreme power. Among all the elements of our Philip's achievements, not one was stained with blood, not one brought with it misery or loss for anyone else. And what the future held was offered on such terms that he would not seem to be grasping it for himself; he would be in no position to refuse it. These were the gifts, these the distinctions, the international popularity, the goodwill of so many monarchs, the just and affectionate prayers of a devoted father, the enthusiasm of his own countrymen and their unbounded hopes, the whole world's expectations - all this, as I say, was suddenly cut short by his untimely death. It was a needlessly cruel demonstration of the truth that no mortal man, however close he may come to the heavenly powers, is other than a bubble.
But it is more than time for me to leave this topic and return to the subject on which I am engaged, for I would not give anyone cause to complain that I have abandoned my adages in mid-career and turned to declamation; though I see that Pliny frequently digresses on similar topics to please himself. It was grief drove me somewhat off course, and not the charm of the subject-matter.

A most elegant aphorism, widely current in literature, is used by the elder Pliny in the preface to his seventh book, where he puts together the countless perils which beset our birth and equally the troubles of our later life, and says in conclusion: 'And so there have been many who maintained that it is best not to be born at all, or to be extinguished as soon as possible.' Cicero writes that this started with Silenus, and in his book On Consolation he expressed it, according to Lactantius, as follows: 'Not to be born is far the best, and not to be cast up on the rocky coast of life; second to that, if you have been born, is to die as soon as you can, and escape from the violence of fortune as you might from a blazing house.' Lactantius also cites these two iambic lines in Greek, which Athenaeus in book 3 of the Doctors at Dinner shows to be from Alexis the comic poet: 'The best of all is never to be born; / The next, when born, to die as soon as you can.' He also adds from Theognis: 'Ne'er to be born is best for mortal men, / Ne'er to set eyes upon the Sun's bright rays; / Or, soon as born, to pass the gates of Death.' There is also a quotation from Euripides: 'I hold it true, as the old saying runs, / 'Tis better never to be born at all.' Menander agrees with him: 'Whom the gods love, die young.'
An epigram survives to this effect by Poseidippus or, as others hold, by Crates the Cynic philosopher, and a reply to it by Metrodorus from the opposite point of view. They are stylish pieces, and I shall give myself the pleasure of transcribing both. This is Crates: 'What should a man follow for his path of life? The market-place is full of strife and business cares. At home is anxiety, the farm has its fill of labour and the sea of terrors. On foreign soil, if you have possessions, all is fear, and if you have none, it is a sorry business. Have you a wife? You will have your share of worry; and if you have none, life will be lonely. Children are hard work; and life without children is frustration. Youth is all folly, and gray hairs again are impotent. You must therefore choose one of these two: either never to be born, or as soon as you are born, to die forthwith.' I have translated it as best I could on the spur of the moment. Metrodorus takes the opposite view (and of this too I have produced a version), as follows: 'Choose any and every path of life. The market-place for reputation and for business skills. At home is peace, on the farm the pleasures of the country, in seafaring is profit. On foreign soil, if you have possessions, men look up to you, and if you have none, no one knows it but you. Have you a wife? There is no place like home; and if you have none, life will be less committed. Children are darlings; and life without children is free of anxiety. Youth means strength; gray hairs mean piety and wisdom. There is no reason, therefore, for choosing one of the two, not to be born or to die forthwith - life is good every way.' There is also a poem of some elegance to this effect by Ausonius, in which after putting together all the evils of this life he concludes as follows: 'How right then were the Greeks, who say that it is good for man not to be born, or else, once born, to die forthwith.' This opinion seems to have been shared by the Thracians, whose custom was to welcome those newly born into the world with tears, but to bid the dead farewell with feasting and dancing. Quintilian refers to this in book 5 of his Principles of Oratory. Pliny and Valerius Maximus do the same. Herodotus in book 5 of his History which is the original source of this story, says that the Trausi were a people living near the Thracians, whose customs they followed in other points, but they had one peculiar to themselves: when a child was born, the relatives sat round it and recalled with lamentation all the miseries it would have to endure, now it had entered this life, and on the other hand, when a man died, they played games and rejoiced at his funeral, remembering how many evils he was now out of reach of. Plutarch in his 'How to Study Poetry' quotes these iambic lines from an unspecified tragic poet, who is shown by Aristides in his Themistocles to be Euripides:
To mourn the babe, with such great woes in store
But him that dies, whose toils are finished now,
To send forth with rejoicing from his home.
The ancients felt that human life in itself was pitiful and full of calamity. Thus Homer speaks habitually of 'wretched mortals/ and Virgil emulating him has 'The best days of life for wretched mortals are the first to pass them by.' Menander, preserved in Stobaeus, thinks that in order to earn the name of being exposed to calamity, it is enough to be a mortal: 'A man, a valid passport to misfortune.' Homer: 'Thus have the gods assigned to wretched mortals / A life of sorrow.' Homer again in Iliad 17: 'Nothing so pitiful, I think, as man / Of all that breathes and moves upon the earth.' Sophocles in the Oedipus at Co/onus: 'Not to be born is the best course of all.' Menander too puts it neatly, in a quotation in Plutarch's essay 'On Tranquillity of Mind': 'Sorrow and Life are surely close akin/ because the life of man by its very nature is exposed to so many troubles. And Plautus puts it nicely in the Bacchides: 'O how much better to have lived than to live!'

There are two other proverbial exaggerations, Καθάπερ ἐν κατόπτρῳ, As though in a mirror, and Ὥσπερ ἐν γραφῇ, As though in a picture, which are used of anything entirely clear and obvious. Terence in the Adelphoe: 'In short, I bid you watch the lives of all men, as though in a mirror.' Plato has 'As though in mirrors' in book 10 of the Laws, because, among the many surfaces which reflect an image, such as water, polished bronze and certain gems, nothing gives so clear a reflection as glass underlaid with lead. Glass itself, being open in texture and translucent, admits images with the greatest freedom, but its translucency does not permit it to retain them to the same extent; it is the film of lead applied to it which has a sort of natural blackness and density, which halts the image that has fallen on the glass and does not let it slip through and vanish. For images disappear like a candle-flame in the sunlight when they fall on a body which is too thin in texture and transparent, such as air, clear water, crystal and glass, which is not obscured by some body that prevents their passage; and on the other hand they do not remain caught in substances which are too dense in texture and too dark, such as stone or wood. Thus Nature, that most cunning designer of all things, has clearly constructed the eye in living creatures on the pattern of a mirror, for at the back of its translucent element she has fixed a dark layer, the removal of which immediately removes the faculty of vision. Hence the pointed saying that as the mirror is the eye of art, so the eye is the mirror of nature. One thing is truly marvellous, the way in which the mirror reflects so very clearly not only the shapes of all the things placed in front of it, but the distances between them, their colours and their motions, in a word the things themselves, one could almost say more vivid than they really are, with the one reservation, that they are the wrong way round. The reason for this is, that the image which passes from a solid body through the air to the surface of a mirror, is uniform and pure, so that it is the same going as it was coming. Of all these questions there is a most subtle discussion by my friend Ambrogio Leoni3 of Nola in his Quaestiones. And by now the art of painting, so rude in its beginnings, has reached such a pitch of subtlety that it can deceive not only men's eyes but even birds, and can make things be taken for real which are illusions in paint.

Ἅλμη οὐκ ἔνεστιν αὐτῷ, There is no salt in him, is said of witless fatuous or stupid people. Salt is clearly the first and most widespread of all condiments. Pliny in book 31 makes it clear that the metaphor is derived from the use of salt as a seasoning for all food and a stimulus to the appetite. 'In fact,' he says, 'human life cannot go on without salt; it is such an essential element that the meaning has been extended to include pleasures of the mind as well. For we use the word salt of them, and all the charm of life and true cheerfulness and relief from our labours is as well summed up by that word as by any other.' Hence 'a style without salt' if it has no charm, and 'a man without salt' of coarse character. On the other hand, 'a salty remark' has a biting sharpness about it, and we apply the word 'salty' to wit and humour which owe their charm to their having something of a sharp point. Seneca does not like our witty remarks to have teeth. Quintilian4 in book 6 of his Institutions, in the chapter on laughter, says that 'by salty in ordinary conversation we mean only something laughable. This is not the natural meaning, though what is laughable ought to have something salty about it too. For Cicero says that salt in this sense is an Attic speciality, and he cannot have meant that the Athenians are more given to laughter than other people. And Catullus, when he says "In that great body not a grain of salt," does not mean that there is nothing in her body that one could laugh at. A thing will therefore be salty which does not lack salt, a sort of straightforward seasoning of style which is detected by a subconscious judgment and as it were stimulates the appetite and also prevents style from becoming tedious. We must remember, however, that just as salt sprinkled with a certain freedom over food adds an attraction of its own provided there is not too much of it, so too this salt in style has something about it that makes us want to go on listening.' So Quintilian. The poem of Catullus to which he refers is as follows: 'Many think Quintia beautiful. That she is fair and tall and stately and the rest, I allow. But beauty in the whole I deny, for there is no charm, in that great body not a grain of salt.' On this passage the commentator of Catullus passes a very foolish criticism on Quintilian for having though too little about what the poet says, when it is he who was half asleep and has not paid attention to Quintilian; whose point is that anything laughable is not therefore 'salty,' although the ignorant may so misuse the word. Terence alluded to this adage in the Eunuchus 'A man with salt in him; and this applies to you/ wishing to show that the soldier is a tasteless blockhead. Later, with the same irony, he credits him with Attic eloquence. Cicero in the second Philippic: 'At one point you even tried a touch of humour, and heaven knows what a bad fit it was! Yet this was partly your fault, for you might have picked up a certain amount of salt from that chorus-girl wife of yours.' He uses 'salt' here to mean wit and liveliness. Recorded by Diogenianus and Zenodotus.

Related to this is that phrase of Plautus in the Bacchides: 'Now I will test whether there is any vinegar, and a sour heart, within your bosom.' In another passage in the same author we find 'Has he vinegar in his bosom?' in the sense of Is he an intelligent man, has he any finesse? For acid things, like salt things, aid and sharpen appetite and arouse digestion. Horace in the Satires uses 'vinegar' for biting comments: 'But Persius, our Greek, drenched by this flood of true Italian vinegar, cries out.' And his actual phrase 'to drench with vinegar' has a proverbial air, recalling that other passage in Horace's Satires: 'But in that same document he is praised for rubbing salt into the city's sore places.'

Such was the conceit of the philosopher Chrysippus (so Diogenes Laertius tells us) that, when asked by someone to whom he should entrust his son to be taught the elements of philosophy, he replied 'Send him to me. If I thought any philosopher more distinguished than myself, I should be in his class studying philosophy.' Hence, he says, that Homeric tag was often applied to Chrysippus, that he alone was wise and the rest drifted by like shadows. This comes in book 10 of the Odyssey, and was said of the seer Teiresias, the only man who was allowed by Prosperpine to retain the use of his understanding even after death, while the other shades flitted about and were no more than shades: To him alone, even in death, Proserpine gave intelligence; he alone is wise, and the rest are fluttering shadows/ It is also used by Plato as though it were proverbial. Hence we may fairly suppose it to be one of the very numerous Homeric lines which, according to Macrobius, achieved currency as proverbs. So too the elder Cato used it of the younger Scipio, as Plutarch tells us in his 'Precepts of Statecraft,' and again in the 'Sayings of Romans': 'He alone is wise, and the rest are fluttering shadows.' It will be aptly used of those who leave everyone else so far behind them that they seem only shadows in comparison, and what in Greek is called λῆρος καὶ φλυαρία, Stuff and nonsense.

Κύνα δέρειν δεδαρμένην, To skin a dog that's skinned already. Suidas says it is often used of people who endure a second time the afflictions they have suffered in the past. Aristophanes in the Lysistrata (another play which I find attributed to him) has 'To skin a dog, as saith Pherecrates, / That's skinned already,' Diogenianus says it is appropriate for those who labour in vain. Some think it fits better when fresh afflictions are piled on one afflicted already. It is related to something of which I have spoken elsewhere, You flay a wineskin, which is used by Aristophanes in the Clouds.

Διὰ καὶ μαχαιρῶν καὶ πυρὸς ῥιπτεῖν δέει, Through sword and fire we needs must make our way. When we wish to convey that any and every degree of peril must be faced. Aristophanes in the comedy entitled Lysistrata: 'If need so be, I'll gladly walk the fire.' And Terence says that a parasite will have no objection 'to snatching his dinner even out of the fire.' Callias' hangers-on were criticized in the comedy because 'nor fire nor steel nor bronze may them prevent / From going in search of dinner.' The words are cited by Plutarch from Eupolis, and he also quotes them in the essay 'How to tell a Flatterer from a Friend.' Horace too: 'Fleeing from poverty over the seas, through rocks, through fire, the zealous merchant hastes to farthest Ind.'
Cicero in book 2 of the Tusculan Questions: 'What fire is there through which they did not run in the old days, as they gathered these honours vote by vote?' meaning, what achievements and what endurance can they not show?

Οὐκ ἐπιγλωττήσομαι, I will not attack with my tongue. The novelty of the expression, according to Diogenianus, seems to have acquired it the status of a proverb. Aristophanes in the Lysistrata: 'As for Athens, I will not attack her with my tongue.' Hesychius cites Aeschylus in the Heraclidae. Greek uses epiglottaisthai for attacking with verbal insults, as one might use in Latin inlinguare, derived from lingua, the tongue, in the same way that involare is derived from vola. Properly it applies to those who forebode ill-fortune; for words can be seized upon as an omen of future evil or good. This is a good reason for always abstaining from evil-speaking. Pindar in the fourth Pythian commends among other virtues that of a tongue that refrains from evil-speaking: 'He robs an evil tongue of its clear utterance.' The scholiast cites for this sense that line in Hesiod: 'Not one to win a victory over his friends, be they bad or good.' It will be possible to use this when we wish to convey that we refuse to discuss any dangerous subject, for instance 'On the affairs of princes or potentates I will make no attack with my tongue.' Hence comes the saying that rash talkers speak 'whatever comes first upon the tongue,' as I have shown elsewhere.

As we learn from Suetonius, the emperor Caligula had such a taste for fire and force in literary style that he used to call Seneca's way of writing 'sand without lime,' as though it were slack and nerveless, and lacked that sense of order which acts, one might say, as the cement of a whole fabric of discourse by setting everything in its proper place. Caligula, it is true, showed many signs of mental aberration, but all the same in this judgment he was very near the mark. Seneca has a sort of impetuous forward movement, and pays very little respect to the arrangement of his matter; and among his outstanding merits, this is a blemish. This is close to that adage of which I have spoken in another place, A broom untied.

Λύκος ἔχανεν, The wolf's jaws are gaping, was said of anyone who hoped for something and made great efforts to get it, but was sent away frustrated. They say that the wolf when set on his prey pursues it with wide-open mouth, and if he misses it wanders to and fro with his jaws gaping. Aristophanes in the Lysistrata: Those who trust nothing save a wolf with gaping jaws.' Lucian too in the Gallus: 'So in I went, though I came very close to being a wolf with vainly gaping jaws.' Dionysius the sophist in one of his letters: 'Have I stumbled without knowing it upon a proverb, and become a wolf with jaws gaping in vain?' In Athenaeus, book 14, the following lines are cited from Eubulus: 'Haste, haste, or like a wolf with gaping jaws / You'll lose them, and later have a long way to run.'

Χοιρίσκος Ἀκαρνάνιος, An Acarnanian sucking-pig, used of someone soft and lovable and dearly loved. Lucian in his Dialogues of Courtesans: 'I find Chaereas, as they say, so smooth; he's an Acarnanian sucking-pig.' This I supposed to be an allusion to the piglet introduced by Aristophanes in the Acharnians as a symbol of those parts of the body which are the seat of sexual pleasures.

Μεγαρικὴ μηχανή, A Megarian contrivance, is used when some end is gained by deception and cunning instead of truth and honesty; for in old days the Megarians had a bad reputation for trickery and fraud, being supposed to think one thing and say another, as the scholiast on Aristophanes suggests. Suidas cites the following iambic line: 'Yes; but for this I've a Megarian trick.' It is found in Aristophanes, in the play called Acharnians. Megarian pottery jars had a reputation, and one might consider whether the proverb alludes to them. And then it is known that Socrates' pupil Euclides was a Megarian, who took over the headship of the Megarian School, and was a distinguished designer of mechanical contrivances. This is a possible source for the adage. Besides which, there is a city of the same name in Pontic Thessaly, and of Thessalian tricks I have spoken elsewhere. Megarian Sphinxes I shall tell of later.

Δοῦλος πρὸ δούλου, δεσπότης πρὸ δεσπότου, One slave is better than another slave, and one master than another master. A proverbial iambic line, the lesson of which is that in any class of men all are not invariably like one another, but account must be taken of individuals and not merely of their circumstances. A man of noble birth, for example, is always above a common man by virtue of his proper rank; but there is no small difference between one man of noble birth and another or between any two common men; so much so that you might well put certain commoners above some of the nobles. Aristotle in book 1 of the Politics: 'Some activities are more honourable, others more necessary; and, as the proverb says, slave surpasses slave and master master.'

Δαιδάλεια ποιήματα, Works of Daedalus, is the name for the creations of any novel technical skill which compels our admiration. It arose as follows. The early sculptors made images of living creatures that were blind and motionless; Daedalus with his newly-invented skill was the first to give them eyes and fit them with some sort of sinews which enabled them to be moved this way and that, so expertly that to the beholder they seemed to live and move. Hence the story goes that some statues by Daedalus had their feet fastened to the ground to prevent them running away. This is mentioned by Plato in the Meno in the following words: 'Because you have not turned your attention to the statues made by Daedalus; and perhaps there are none in your part of the world. - What makes you say that? - Because these too, unless they are fastened, get up and run away; but if they are fixed, they stay there. - What of that? - To acquire one of his works which is not fastened down will not cost you very much; it's like a runaway slave, and does not stay there. But a fixed statue would be very expensive.' Plato again, in the Hippias major, uses the phrase as though it was commonly applied to old-fashioned worn-out things: 'But if Bias were to come to life again now, my dear Hippias, you would all laugh at him, just as modern sculptors say of Daedalus that, if he were alive now and produced the sort of works by which he made his reputation, he would make himself ridiculous.' Aristotle also mentions him in the first book of the Politics, speaking of slaves who are, he says, only living tools: 'For if every tool were capable of fulfilling its own task, either on receipt of an order or by foreseeing the need for itself, as they say Daedalus' creations could, or those tripods made by Vulcan which according to the poet came forward into the assembly of the gods of their own accord, if shuttles could weave in this way and plectra play the lyre, architects would no longer need workmen and masters would not need slaves.' The passage to which Aristotle refers is in Homer, in the sixth [book of the] Iliad. He also mentions this in the first book of the De anima, refuting the opinion of Democritus, who held that the soul moved the body by first being moved itself and then passing the motion on. The theory of Democritus, he says, would be like what we find in Philippus the author of comedies, who writes that Daedalus made a wooden figure of Venus that moved when quicksilver was poured into it.
So it will be possible to adapt the proverb to various uses. One will be when we wish to convey that something is done or made with unusual skill. Homer uses 'daedal' to mean cunningly-wrought: 'Whose hands were skilled to make all manner of daedal things.' Pindar too in his Olympians: 'And daedal tales deceive men with their dappled lies.' Virgil speaks of 'daedal Circe,' because with her new and wonderful black arts she could turn men into beasts. Skilled craftsmen too in words are logodaedal in Greek, and expert cooks are opsodaedal. Another occasion will be when we wish to convey that someone is unreliable and inconstant. Thus in Plato, in the Euthyphro, Socrates says that arguments that will not stand firm are like 'the works of Daedalus'; to which Euthyphro replies that Socrates himself is the Daedalus, because he will not allow Euthyphro's arguments to remain valid, but is always disproving and overthrowing what a moment before he seemed to accept.

Ἔγγω δὲ φῶρ τε φῶρα καὶ λύκος λύκον, Thief knoweth thief and wolf to wolf is known. This is another iambic line quoted by Aristotle in book 7 of the Eudemian Ethics among adages expressing likeness. Some mutual affection is commonly found between those who suffer from similar failings, and specially among thieves; and wolves like robbers hunt in packs. We can see affection developing immediately between certain people because their natures are in some secret way akin, and how conversely some grow to hate each other because they are different. On this likeness and unlikeness Democritus based his whole theory of causation. There was a dog once that always lay on the same floor-tile; and when Democritus was asked why this was so, he actually replied that the dog had some kinship with the tile. Aristotle tells the story in passing in the second book of the Magna moralia among proverbs expressing likeness, and pokes fun at Democritus; for how can a dog and a tile be akin? Yet Democritus is not so very far from some physicians I could name, who parry every question by referring to some secret affinity in Nature.

Ἐρᾷ μὲν ὄμβρου γαῖα, The earth rejoices in rain. Used when a person longs for things which he knows are suitable and good for him. The half-line is cited, as though it were proverbial, by Aristotle in the seventh book of the Eudemian Ethics, where he shows that resemblance is not the only source from which friendship arises, as it does between thieves, jackdaws and wolves; but that differences too can sometimes be a cause of goodwill, and resemblance a cause of hatred. For earth, though dry by nature, has a love for rain, and one potter hates another, while the ignorant love an educated man, and women love men. In the same place he tells how a poet was rebuked by Heracleitus for writing the line 'Would that strife might be done away from among gods and mortal men.' Athenaeus in book 13 cites a line from Euripides: 'Earth loves the rain when all the ground is dry.' Aristotle in book 8 of the Nicomachean Ethics cites the same aphorism from Euripides, but with defective metre: 'Euripides is saying "Earth loves the rain when she is dry with thirst, / And the proud heaven, when it is full of rain, / Loves to fall down to earth."' He adduces this in support of the view of certain thinkers, who disagree with the proverbs and believe that unlikes are attracted by unlikes and opposites sought by opposites. Earth is cold and dry, and seeks rain, which in accordance with the nature of the air whence it comes is hot and moist; and rain in turn seeks earth.

Ἡράκλεια λουτρὰ, Hercules' baths, was a name given to baths which were excessively hot, as the books tell us that Nero's were. Aristophanes in the Clouds: 'Where did you ever see Hercules' baths that were cold?' The scholiast notes, on the authority of Ibycus, that Vulcan caused hot springs to appear as a present for Hercules, so that he could have a bath, and hence arose the practice of calling all hot baths after Hercules. Athenaeus supports this in book 12. Aristotle moreover in the Problems, in the last problem of section 24, shows that baths of this kind were held sacred by the Ancients, as being the product of two things which are sacred by nature, sulphur and lightning. Peisander records that it was Minerva who provided a hot bath for Hercules when he was weary. Hence I think it probable that the proverb could rightly be used when people are tired as a result of old age or hard work, and particular pains are taken to restore their strength. For Plato in book 6 of the Laws calls hot baths 'old mens' baths,' and says they should be provided for the aged; normally the Ancients used cold baths, and hot baths were provided for invalids only. In our own day, even waggoners and bargemen take hot baths; and the Germans spend the greatest part of their lives in stove-heated rooms, like fire-worms. Pindar too in the twelfth Olympian mentions these baths: 'You ennoble the hot baths of the Nymphs;' either because there was a place in that city called Hot Baths, or because the man himself, having won his way like Hercules through many contests, was now being refreshed by the hot baths which according to the legend the Nymphs had provided for Hercules when he was weary after his labours. He asserts moreover that a man's body is greatly restored by hot baths in ode 4 of the Nemeans: 'Even hot water does not make the limbs so supple as do words of praise linked with the lyre.'

Η τρὶς ἓξ, ἢ τρεῖς κύβοι, Either three times six dice or three. We shall find this adage convenient, whenever we wish to convey that we are willing to run extreme risks and either win outright or be utterly defeated. It is taken from the ancient game of dice, in which the player who had thrown nine was the winner on every count, and he who had thrown a three was the farthest from winning; for in earlier days it was the custom to play with three dice, not two as it is now. The word 'dice' is also applied to the actual throw, which is sometimes 'full' and from time to time 'empty'; so three times three was the most fortunate, and three was empty. Julius Pollux mentions this adage in book 9 of On the Names of Things. Moreover that dice are the same as what are called kyboi, cubes, in Greek is shown by Gellius, book \ chapter 20: 'A cube' he says 'is a figure of which every face is a square. The dice with which we play using a dicebox have, as Marcus Varro observes, square sides, and are therefore called cubes.' Zenodotus cites this proverb from a play by Pherecrates called The Antmen, for it is the close of a trochaic line. Suidas also quotes Aeschylus in the Agamemnon: 'I will see to it that my masters' business turns out well, now that my beacon-watch has thrown me a treble six.' It is used by Plato in the last book of Laws: - 'If this is the state of affairs, Stranger, what do you think we should do? - It seems to me right, my friends, to make this, as the phrase goes, a matter of common concern and be willing to run extreme risks for the sake of the whole commonwealth, doing all we can to throw either three sixes or a three.'

Ὅσα Μῦς ἐν Πίσσῃ, The same as Mus at Pisa (we must supply 'endured' or some such verb). Used of those who win the day and get what they want, but not without great trouble and immense effort. Suidas says it arose from an athlete or boxer from Tarentum, who won only one victory in the Olympic games at Pisa, and then it was after receiving extensive injuries. Plutarch in the fifth essay of his Table-talk' tells us that monomachies or single combats were staged at Pisa, in which those who had fallen were brutally treated, even to the point of losing their lives.

Μῦς ἄρτι πίσσης γεύομενος, A mouse newly tasting pitch. Some say that this is commonly applied to those who formerly had some degree of courage and confidence, but later, when they have had a taste of danger, turn out proper cowards. It is not yet clear whether the image is taken from a mouse caught in pitch, as Diogenianus thinks, or from the mouse mentioned in the first book of Herodotus, which was caught in pitch and so paid the penalty, or from the celebrated boxer from Tarentum of whom I have just spoken; in which case pissa, the word for pitch, is an allusion to Pisa, the place where the athletic contests are held. Theocritus in Idyll 14: 'But now, Theonychus, I'm like the mouse in the fable that has tasted pitch.' In any case, whether you refer it to the animal or to the boxer whose name was Mus, the force of the adage remains much the same: it means that an experiment has gone wrong. For an inexperienced mouse, if it has fallen into some pitch, either perishes or gets out with great difficulty; and thereafter it remembers the danger it was in and is afraid to touch the stuff. The famous boxer, on the other hand, who to start with was so bold and boastful, when he tried his hand at the contest at Olympia and discovered how high was the price of victory, kept away from it thereafter. This is the bearing of that tag in Horace: 'Sweet to those who have never tried it is the prospect of cultivating a friend in power; he who has tried, is wary.' In the same way young men with no experience of wars go to war easily; the aged, who have experienced all the evils war brings in its train, shun it. So our adage will not be out of place, used of a man who has tried something and regrets it, or who has made an unsuccessful attempt and is afraid to try again.
Related to those I have given elsewhere: The Phrygians learn wisdom too late, The people of Cumae learn wisdom late, and Once stung, the fisherman will be wiser. This more than others is the great plague of mortal life, that we do not learn so readily how to avoid evil as how to cure it when we have let it happen. Plato complains of this in book 10 of the Laws: 'We do not devote ourselves, most of us, to not committing injustice, but when the deed is done we try to put it right.' And according to Plautus, it is much better not to do wrong than to cure it afterwards.

Δελφικόν ξίφος, A Delphian sword, was used of something that could be adapted to different purposes, in the way that, for example, they used the same vessels both as drinking-cups at feasts and as shields in battle. For a Delphian sword was forged in such a way that with the same weapon they could at the same time both sacrifice victims and execute criminals. This sword is spoken of both by Euripides in his tragedies and by Aristotle in the first book of the Politics, where he is arguing that nature does not produce one thing to serve many purposes, but each individual thing for its own particular and proper end: 'For nature produces nothing like the Delphian sword made by coppersmiths, as if they had a lack of material, but one thing for one purpose.' Aristotle mentions this again in book 4 of his On the Parts of Animals, where he treats of the tongues of insects, which perform several functions, equally tasting their food and drawing it towards them, and defending themselves against attack like a pointed weapon; which, he says, nature would not do unless compelled by poverty to adapt one and the same organ to different uses, for that which has the sharpest point would seem more fitted for defence and a porous organ for tasting. 'For' he says 'when it is possible to use two to perform two tasks, and nothing else stands in the way, nature normally does nothing of the kind; and so it is through poverty that the coppersmith's art makes that compound object, a spit-lampholder, out of a spit and a lamp. But if this is not possible, she makes the same object serve many purposes.' From this it seems to me that a 'spit-lampholder' would be a more agreeable fit for my proverb than a Delphian sword, unless maybe it is itself a Delphian sword. So too Euripides in the Orestes: 'It is his fate to die by the Delphic sword.' It will thus fit either poor people who because of their poverty adapt the same garment or whatever it may be to different uses, or an ill-written exordium which is applicable to different cases. It will also be possible to adapt the proverb to a serious purpose: for instance, if one were to call learning a Delphian sword, because it is of value to men of all ages and all walks of life. For good literature is a necessity to the young and a source of pleasure to the old; it is the poor man's riches, and an ornament to the rich man; it is a comfort in adversity, and confers distinction on success; it adds to the splendours of noble birth, and provides men of low degree with their first steps on the path to honour.

Think before you start; but once you have thought, you must act without delay. This aphorism from Sallust is referred to as proverbial by Aristotle in book 5 of the Eudemian Ethics and book 6 of the Nicomachean; They say you should do promptly what you have decided, but be slow and hesitant while making up your mind.' Diogenes Laertius makes out that Bias is the author of this dictum. On this aphorism I have spoken at greater length in the proverb Make haste slowly. Datames is praised on this account by Aemilius Probus, that when he had thought out a situation, he had the courage to act on his thinking, being accustomed to think before taking action.

Margites is used for a stupid man by Lucian in his Hermotimus: 'But you think you are talking to a Margites.' He is described as follows by Homer, in a passage cited by Aristotle in book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics: 'But him the gods made neither digger nor ploughman, nor gave him any other skill.' Suidas tells us that Margites was a person famous for his remarkable stupidity: he could not count above five, when he had married a wife he dare not touch her for fear she might complain of him to her mother, and when he was already grown up he asked his own mother whether her father was the same as his. Though some tell these tales of Melitides and others of Coroebus, of whom I shall speak in their proper places. It is clear enough that the name Margites is derive from me, not and ergon, work, because he was no good at anything. Dargites was the title of a work attributed by some to Homer; but this, it seems, has perished. This is made clear by the scholiast on the Birds of Aristophanes. This agrees with Hesiod's remarks about the man who 'neither thinks for himself nor listens to another, and is no use' and 'of no account.'

Nothing is more hackneyed than the aphorism What's done cannot be undone. It is found in Terence in the Phormio. Aristotle in book 5 of the Eudemian Ethics: 'It is not possible that what is done should be undone.' And he then cites lines from a tragedy by Agathon: 'One thing alone is banned even for God, / To make undone that which has once been done.' Cicero in his Letters to Atticus uses more than once a line from Homer, Iliad 18 and 19: 'What's done is done, and we will let it be, / Though grieved at heart.' And there are some elegant lines of Phocylides: 'Grieve not thy heart for evils past and done, / For what is done can never be undone.' Pindar has the same aphorism in the second hymn of his Olympians: 'Of what is now accomplished, whether in right or wrong, even Time father of all things could not undo what is once done and finished.'

'Ἐν δὲ δικαιοσύνῃ συλλήβδήν πᾶσ᾽ ἀρετ᾽ ἐστίν, Justice comprises in itself all virtue. Aristotle records this line as proverbial in, among other places, book 5 of the Nicomachean Ethics. It is found in the elegies of Theognis. Chaeremon ascribes the sum of all good things to prudence; a line of his cited by the Greek authorities runs as follows: 'The wise man at one stroke has all he needs.' And Socrates thought that wisdom comprehended all virtues; Aristotle however, after discussion, admits the truth of the saying that there is no virtue without wisdom but denies that all virtue is wisdom, because they take different forms. But 'justice' is often used to denote the genus rather than the species, in the same way that Scripture calls 'just' the man who is free from all faults.

Quintilian in book 4 of his Principles of Oratory cites as proverbial this aphorism: A liar should have a good memory. Apuleius too in his second Defence against a charge of witchcraft: 'I have often heard it said, and much to the point, that a liar should have a good memory.' St Jerome: 'Forgetting the old proverb, that liars should have a good memory.' The meaning of the adage is clear enough, that it is very difficult for a liar to be always consistent, unless he has an extremely good memory; for it is much more difficult to remember falsehoods than the truth. And so this is how those who build a fabric of lies are usually caught out: they forget what they said before and produce a discrepant story. This is how Davus in Terence is detected, and thus Psyche's invention in Apuleius is detected by her sisters.

Κακός κακῷ γὰρ συντέτηκεν ἡδονῇ, For a villain is a source of pleasure to a fellow-villain. Recorded by Aristotle among adages of resemblance in the seventh book of the Eudemian Ethics: 'Wicked men enjoy each others society because they share a common stake in evil.' Juvenal too: 'Great is the concord among catamites.' Aristotle also cites the line as from Euripides in the Magna Moralia. Aeschines Against Timarchus cites the same view from the Phoenix of Euripides: 'But whoever enjoys the society of wicked men, I never asked, knowing that he will be such a man as those are, in whose company he delights.'

Aristotle in book 7 of the Eudemian Ethics records this aphorism as one in common use: 'It is rightly said that friendship is for the steadfast, just as happiness is for those contented with their lot.' Friendship should be founded on character, not on possessions or physical beauty, for if based on perishable things, it must of necessity itself be perishable. And in human affairs nothing is steadfast save only virtue, for virtue alone in not exposed to the vagaries of fortune. And then man's happiness is not to be found in possessions, which do not satisfy his desires but stimulate them, but in the contentment of each man with what he has.
Aristotle in book 2 of the Rhetoric, as an example of a sentence which is simple and on inspection perfectly clear, gives the line 'No lover he whose love can ever cease.' This is supported by that saying of Seneca: 'Friendship that could come to an end was never true friendship.'

A proverbial aphorism of Aeschylus is recorded by Aristophanes in the Frogs: Rear not a lion's whelp within the city. 'Tis best to rear no lion there at all; But those that do so must obey his whims. This passage is referred to by Valerius Maximus, book 7 in the chapter on 'Sayings of the wise'. The lesson of the adage is that one should not encourage any power which may prove able to overcome the laws; but that if such a power has come into existence, it is not to the state's advantage to struggle against a man whom you cannot overcome except at the cost of doing great damage to the state itself. A tyrant must either be endured, or not admitted.

Cicero in book 2 of his work On Divination writes that there was a line in general circulation in Greek to the effect that 'he who guesses right should be reckoned the best prophet.' The line is cited by Plutarch in his essay 'On the Pythian Oracles': 'He who guesses well has been said by the proverb to be the best prophet,' though this passage in Plutarch was damaged and incomplete. All the same, one can infer that the verse went something like this: The best of seers is he that guesses well.' And in that form he cites it from Euripides in his essay 'On the Obsolescence of Oracles.' Cicero also quotes it in book 7 of his Letters to Atticus: 'From you I expect to learn what will happen; "the best of prophets," you know.' Theocritus alludes to it in the Fishermen (if that is really his work): 'He is the best interpreter of dreams whose teacher is his own commonsense.' The lesson of the adage is that foreknowledge of the future should be sought, not from the casting of lots or taking of omens, but from prudence. The man equipped with prudence will easily foresee by judging from the past and the present what is likely to happen. So it was with good reason that Aristotle wrote in the Eudemian Ethics, book 7: 'Prudent and wise men possess immediate foresight, and only they.' If only this method of foreseeing the future would commend itself to princes, of whom in our day a good number depend on soothsayers and astrologers, a class of men who, to judge by the majority of them nowadays, are not merely futile but subversive, and a pestilent influence in the community!

Anyone who has become an object of scorn and an outcast can be described in Greek as ῥακὸς πολυσχιδες, A thing of shreds and tatters. The image is taken from a garment worn out by long use and therefore discarded, though when new it was valued. Some men treat their friends like that, as they would old clothes: as long as they have the power to be of service, they are welcomed and looked after and made much of, but the moment they are too old or for any other reason cease to be of use, they are neglected and cast off. Lucian: 'Until, having reduced you, as the saying goes, to a thing of shreds and tatters, he threw you out.' And in the same dialogue, On Salaried Posts, he introduces a comparison with new shoes, which are valued so long as they are new and shiny, but when they are covered with mud they are thrown into some corner, where no one looks after them and they are filled with dirt and insects. Solon said of those who trained for the contests at Olympia that to begin with they were expensive, and therefore a burden on society; when they won a victory, their conceit made them a burden to their fellow-citizens; and finally, when they grew old, they served no useful purpose whatever. To convey this idea Laertius cites a line from Euripides: 'Cloaks that have lost their nap are thrown away.'

Ἀδεὲς δέδιας δέος, You are afraid where there is nothing to fear. Used when a man is frightened who is in safety. Virgil: 'Afraid when all was safe.' Even the shape of the Greek phrase has a certain element of the proverbial about it, in the antithesis, of which further examples are Αδωρα δῶρα, Gifts that are no gifts, δεσμὸς ἄδεσμος, A bond that is no bond, παρθένος ἀπάρθενος, Maid that is no maid, νύμφη ἄνυμφος, Bride and no bride, κῆπος ἄκηπος, Garden that is no garden, and others of the kind, as I have already pointed out more than once. Greek has a word mormolyttein, to frighten, for mormolykeion is the Greek for a mask resembling a ghost or evil spirit, with which certain people terrify children. Basil in a letter to Athanasius: 'I should indeed be a child if I were frightened off by such bogies as these.' The adage is recorded in the collection made by Plutarch, if the title is to be trusted.

The nickname συκοφάντης, Sycophant, was commonly conferred as a term of abuse. Aristophanes in the Plutus: 'With what a swaggering rush this sycophant, / Ye gods, invades the scene!' It was a proverbial expression of disgust for those who brought false accusations, and dragged people to court on the most trifling charges. Its origin was supposed to be that at one time the price of figs was high in Attica, and those who stole them were fined; and anyone who detected or reported a theft was called a sycophant, a fig-detector, as a term of contempt. There were other names, too, for men fond of bringing accusations, of which it is easier to give the sense than a literal translation: fig-scandalmongers, living on figs, fig-watchers, counters of figs, fig-lovers, fig-minded, as fond of figs as a child. Plutarch in his essay 'On Curiosity' shows that this nickname has the following origin: when the export of figs from Athens was prohibited by law, certain people kept watch on those who despatched them secretly, and reported them to the authorities. Hence the popular sense of humour gave them the name of 'sycophants,' from syka, figs and phainesthai, to show up, because they showed up this fig-trade. He also mentions this in his life of Solon. Festus Pompeius declares that in Athens capital punishment was the penalty for those who stole figs. The same statement is made by Athenaeus in book 3 of the Doctors at Dinner, and he adds that the place where the fig-tree was first discovered was called by the Athenians Holy Fig.
There is a special kind of sycophant, who reports not only what people say and do, but even their dreams; and this type of informer was very readily listened to by Constantius, as Ammianus tells us in book 15. He paid particular attention to a creature called Mercury, who as a result was commonly called 'the messenger of dreams,' who under the pretext of friendship used to worm his way into a dinner-party, and if anyone blurted out some dream he had had, this would be retailed in a distorted form to the emperor. This reached such a pitch that hardly anyone dared confess that he had fallen asleep, unless he knew everyone present, and several well-informed men lamented their misfortune in not having been born among the Atlanteans, who are said never to dream; as Stephanus too says under the word Atlantes. Greek has a word oneiroskopoi for those who observe dreams, oneiropoloi or oneirokritai for those who interpret them, and oneiroplêktoi for those who are frightened by them.

Πολλοῖς παρασάγγαις υπερδραμεῖν, To be many parasangs ahead, is used of a man who is a long way in front of the rest and is in many respects superior. In Athenaeus, in book 3 of the Doctors at Dinner, is 'Outstripping by many parasangs the famous Dionysius of Sicily.' The more this is applied to the things of the mind, the more it will gain in interest. A parasang is the Persian name for a distance of thirty stades, as Herodotus indicates in several passages; and the word is used by Lucian in his Icaromenippus, a dialogue I myself once translated into Latin.

Clearchus, quoted by Athenaeus in book 3, has Σαπρὸς τάριχος τὴν ὀριγανον φιλεῖ , Rotting salt fish is fond of marjoram. Marjoram is a culinary herb with a sharp juice something like savory. Even in our own day, frugal housekeepers add vinegar in place of marjoram to meat that is going off, to conceal the bad smell. It will be aptly applied to anything which left to itself is dishonourable or disagreeable, and therefore needs to be dressed up and made acceptable with some external appetiser. Mean people still have a custom of adding something that tastes acid to fish that is going bad, so that those who eat it may not be disgusted by the flavour of decay. Truth is welcome for its own sake; honourable dealing is accepted in its own right. Falsehood must be painted over and baseness must be smartly dressed; rotting salt fish is fond of marjoram.

Athenaeus in book 3 of the Doctors at Dinner cites from Apollodorus a proverb of the form λιχνότερα τᾶν πορφυρᾶν, Greedier than purple, and suggests two possible sources: one is the purple dye, which seizes, as it were, upon everything with which it comes in contact, spreading its colour over all nearby objects and giving them added brilliance, while the other is the creature itself, which seizes and devours everything within its reach. Either can be inferred pretty well from Pliny's words, who in book 9 chapter 36 writes of the colour as follows: 'But the quality of purple so much sought after for the dyeing of fabrics they have in the middle of their throats, where a small quantity of the liquid is found in a white vein. From this the valuable substance is extracted which shows the dark purplish-red colour, and the rest of the body is unproductive.' And a little further on: 'Hence' (or, as some read, 'for this') 'the rods and axes of Rome clear the way. It is a symbol of the reverence due to children, and sets the senate apart from the knights; it is called upon to secure the favour of heaven, adds brightness to every garment, and blends with gold in a triumphal procession. So that a mad passion even for purple could be excused.' Of its greed he later has this to say: The tongue of the purple-fish is as long as a man's finger, and provides it with food by piercing other shellfish; such is the hardness of its point.' This will be suitable for greedy men, or those who turn everything to their own advantage. It will be a little more harsh, but not without point, to adapt it to kings who 'feed on their people,' or to advocates who are dressed in purple and sweep everything into their own pockets, making something out of it whichever way they turn. Something of this sort seems to have been in the minds of the poets who invented the story that Midas turned all that he touched into gold.

Τάριχος ὀπτὸς εὐθὺς ἂν ἴδῃ τὸ πῦρ, Salt fish is baked as soon as it has seen the fire. Athenaeus in book 3 cites this as a proverb. The tarichos of which he speaks is a kind of salt fish, of which something is said under the proverb Those who have no meat. I suppose it to be the same as the whitebait, which I have already explained in the proverb Whitebait on the fire. In the same passage he also records this line as being proverbial: Salt fish could not endure what it deserves.

Τηλοῦ φίλοι ναίοντες οὐκ εἰσὶν φίλοι, Friends who dwell far away are no true friends. This proverb is passed in review by Athenaeus in his Doctors at Dinner, book 4, and he calls it of all proverbs 'the most inhuman,' because it seems to wipe out the memory of absent friends. It is quite true that the returns from friendship are far greater when the friends are near at hand, for there is a mutual to and fro of friendly actions and daily intercourse. Besides which, it is a common experience that once we are prevented from actually seeing those with whom we have this relationship, it somehow happens that some degree of forgetfulness of our friends creeps over us, so that there is a saying now on everyone's lips: Out of sight, out of mind. Aristotle in book 8 of the Nicomachean Ethics admits that physical separation does not dissolve friendship, but it does interrupt the services friendship can render. And since 'the crowd assesses friendship by its use,' when the mutual services fostered by friendship are done away the friendship also dies. And so Hesiod tells us that we should for choice invite our neighbours to dinner: 'Invite' he says 'him who dwells near you.' Jewish proverbs too admit that a friend who is near is better than a brother far off. Chremes in Terence likewise thinks that to be a neighbour is 'near the bone' in friendship. Propertius in book 3 concurs: 'Love out of sight will soon be out of mind.' Though I for my part do not see why Athenaeus should think this adage so far removed from ordinary human feelings. In my view it is not telling us how we ought to react so much as what normally happens. How few friends can you find so reliable that separation will not make them begin to change from what they were? And so you will be able to use this proverb in either of two ways, like a Delphian sword. You could understand it to mean that one should not trust friends from whom one is separated by a great distance, or that one ought not to make friends of those who live a long way off, from whom little benefit is to be expected, but if possible of those whose friendship one can enjoy face to face.

Ἄθυτα δ᾽ ἱερὰ πολλάκις κατεσθίει, And offerings unblest full oft devours. An iambic line, cited by Athenaeus in book 4 from Simonides, which refers to some ill-mannered woman who showed her greed at dinner-parties. It will be a neat fit for those whose stomachs drive them to fall at once upon their dinner and devour it, without waiting for those ceremonies, those minor civilities which are practised by civilized people at the beginning of the meal: the pious prayers, for example, with which they ask a blessing on the food, and then some degree of polite hesitation is shown in choosing a place to sit, nor do we sink our talons into the dish the moment it is placed before us. Nor will it be out of place to use this of heirs who fasten upon an inheritance without waiting for the legal formalities, and firmly seize what is not theirs. It derives from the victims at a sacrifice, which it was not permitted to touch until the liturgy had been completed. Plato too thinks there should be a preliminary libation to the gods, even at a drinking-party, and the Ancients thought there was something sacred about a dinner-table, as Plutarch testifies. Hence it comes that even in our own day people think it wrong to come to table with 'unwashed hands. Though Christ neglected ceremonies of this class in comparison with those which alone are of importance to our well-being.

Χῖος δεσπότην ὠνήσατο, The man from Chios has purchased his master, will fit those who bring evil on their own heads. This adage was used by Eupolis in his Friends, on the evidence of Athenaeus in book 6 of the Doctors at Dinner. It arose, he says, as follows: the people of Chios were the first to employ servants to whom they paid wages, and later, when they were conquered by Mithridates, king of Cappadocia, they were handed over in fetters to their own servants to be deported to the neighbourhood of Colchis, an oracle having already foretold that this would one day happen to them. As authorities for this story he cites Nicolaus the Peripatetic and the Stoic Poseidonius. Nor does Stephanus fail to tell us that they were the first people to employ servants in the way in which the Spartans used to employ what they called helots, which means captives, and the Sicyonians what they called corynêphoroi, club-bearers from corynê, a club, while the Italians used Pelasgians and the Cretans the so-called dmoitês. Chios is a very well-known Ionian island, with a city of the same name; it is spelled Chios with an acute accent, while the possessive adjective, Chiote, has a circumflex.

Ζωὴ και ψυχὴ, Life and soul, used of something sweet beyond measure - a proverb born in the bedchamber, and taken from thence into everyday speech. It seems to have been the special property of the female sex. Juvenal: 'My life, My soul, till now heard only between the sheets, you use in public places.' Martial in book 10 of his Epigrams, addressing Laelia: 'You talk like a tart, always My life, My soul, / And breathe the air Hersilia and Egeria breathed.' It was of this Juvenal was thinking when he wrote They fornicate in Greek.' Hesiod says that money is the soul of mortal men: 'Coin is the soul of that poor creature, man.' And Aristotle wrote that money is like man's second soul. After all, nothing is more enjoyed, or more valued, than life.

Virgil in The Sorceress: 'Can I believe it? Or do lovers shape their own dreams?' Servius points out that the poet is using the proverbial formula; for all men are ready to believe what they hope is true. And 'How slowly we believe what, once believed, / We know will hurt!' as Ovid has it. It was fear and hope, as Lucian puts it so neatly and with so much truth in his False Prophet, that invented divination and augury. Those who desire something passionately take every chance to flatter their own wishes, and seize on anything in reach as a foreshowing of the result for which they long. Conversely, those in a pitiful state of apprehension seek for some consolation in their fear from any and every source. There is not much difference between this and that remark in Terence: 'It doesn't make sense to me. It's their scheme; that's how they like it.' There seems little discrepancy between this and that line in Theocritus: 'Every bitch dreams of bread; I dream of fish.' Those who flatter their own wishes are said in Greek 'to make up their own dreams,' because they seize hold of anything as food for their hopes.

The polyp or octopus provided a proverbial name in old days, either for stupid blockheads or for grasping men with crooked talons. The reason why the polyp is thought stupid is its habit of moving of its own accord towards the hand of the man who is trying to catch it, and it is never caught except through its reluctance to retreat; so Athenaeus tells us. And it is said to be greedy and tenacious because, whatever it gets within the scope of its whip-like arms, it draws in by suction and holds it fast. Plautus in the Aulularia: 'I know those polyps of yours, which never let go what they have once touched.'
There will be nothing to prevent us from applying the name 'polyps' to those who turn themselves into any and every shape in their wish to stand well with everyone. They are elegantly criticized by Phocylides: 'Nor hide one opinion in your heart while you offer another, / Nor change to suit your setting like the polyp on its rock.' Ion, quoted by Athenaeus in book 7: 'I hate the polyp, always changing colour.' Here belongs that piece of advice in Plautus, that we should do good to those who are good to us, and hurt those who hurt us. On this account Pindar praises someone in the fourth hymn of the Nemeans: 'Gentle towards the good, but a stubborn adversary lying in wait for the forward.' And we find something like this in the third hymn of the same book: 'A child among children, among grown men a man, and a third part among the aged, as we, the human race, possess each in turn.' Pindar is praising the man who adapts himself to the characters and ages of all other men. On the same grounds he praises a man in the eighth hymn of the Pythians: 'For thou knowest that gentleness alike in giving and receiving that suits the moment,' and again in the fourth of the same: 'For he is a young man among boys, and in council an elder,' and in the second: 'Be it mine to love my friends; but against an enemy like a wolf, foe against foe, I will deliver my attack in secret.'

Οὐδεὶς κακὸς μέγας ἰχθύς, No bad big fish. A riddle circulating as a proverb, which was applied to men with big bodies but no brains. Clearchus in his work on proverbs, cited by Athenaeus book 8, gives it the following origin.
Stratonius the lyre-player once caught sight of Porpis of Rhodes, another player, who was physically immense but not a very great performer; and when some people asked him who it was, he replied in these words, "No bad big fish," which he used with a double meaning, to convey that he was a nobody, a rascal, a hulking brute, and a wet fish in the sense of being dumb, inarticulate and quite unmusical. Theophrastus in his treatise on The Ridiculous concurs that Stratonicus was the speaker, but says the target was Simylas the actor and not Porpis, and gives the wording as 'A big nothing no-good rotten fish.' But the form given by Clearchus is neater, because of the ambiguity, which has some charm. A little further on in the same passage of Athenaeus, Aristotle records the following incident to illustrate this adage; it is in his Constitution of Naxos. In Naxos most of the well-to-do lived in the city, and the remainder were scattered in villages. In one of these villages, called Lestada, lived a man called Telegoras, who was very rich, and well-born, and had great influence among the common people. This man enjoyed many privileges, and in particular he was honoured every day with gifts from his fellow-citizens, to such an extent that those who had anything to sell, and were offered less for it than they wanted, were accustomed to say that they would rather give it to Telegoras than sell if for such a poor price. Thus it happened that some young men tried to buy an enormous fish, and the fisherman said in the usual way that he would rather give it to Telegoras than accept such an offer. Tired of hearing the same reply so often, they bought the fish and with a show of spurious generosity took it to Telegoras themselves. Though it had been gratefully accepted, they then attacked the man himself, and raped his daughters, who were of marriageable age. This action roused such indignation that the Naxians seized their arms and set about attacking the young men, and such a civil war ensued that Lygdamis, the leader of the insurrection, was later able to seize supreme power and oppress his native land. Such is Aristotle's narrative. But I do not see what this had to do with the proverb, unless we suppose that there are two proverbs, of which the second took the form I would rather give it to Telegoras than sell it for so little. For Athenaeus indicates that Aristotle discussed the proverb. It looks like an iambic line which has been corrupted by a change in the order of words. This will be mended if we put kakos at the end of the line.

There is a proverbial air about that couplet in Theognis: 'No rose, no hyacinths on squills appear; / No servant-girl a freeborn son will bear.' The lesson of the adage is that honourable parents produce honourable children, and the reverse. Horace uses a similar expression in the Odes: 'Fierce eagles do not hatch the unwarlike dove.' This will have more point if applied to the ignorant pupil of an ignorant teacher or the discreditable product of a disreputable upbringing. The adage belongs to the same class as An ill crow lays an ill egg and An evil father ne'er begat good sons. Squill, by the way, is a kind of plant not unlike the aloe, on which Pliny in various passages has much to say.

This is from Virgil, from his Sorceress: a proverbial aphorism, and as trite a one as you will easily find. The source seems to be Homer, for in Iliad 13 Polydamas addresses Hector as follows: 'You will never be able to think of all things for yourself at the same time; for one man God has endowed with the arts of war, to another he has given dancing, to another skill in song and playing on the lyre; but he is yet another in whose breast great Jupiter has set sound sense, and many are the men that profit from it.' Again in Odyssey 8: 'So true it is that the gods do not give their delightful gifts to all men, whether beauty of form or sound sense or the power of speech. For one man may be nothing at all to look upon, but God compensates his lack of beauty with the gift of words.' Euripides in the Rhesus: 'But no mortal man is born to know everything; different men have different gifts.' To the same effect are these words in Theognis: 'Few are the men who have both virtue and good looks; happy indeed is he who has a share of both.' Livy in book 22: The gods have not given all gifts to the same man. You know how to win a battle, Hannibal; you do not know how to use your winnings.' It looks as though Livy had recalled this from Iliad 23: 'Never did it come to pass, that the same man should acquire skill in every activity.' Here too belongs that phrase of Pindar's in the Nemeans: 'Different men possess different skills,' where the scholiast shows that there was a proverb current in Athens: 'Different men make different inventions.' Pindar again in another place: 'Each of us differs by nature, as we are allotted our way of life; one man gets this, others get that, and that one man should get a share in all kinds of felicity is impossible.' Again, in the first hymn of the Olympians: 'Some men are great in one thing and some in others,' and more clearly in the eighth: 'Different blessings fall to the lot of different men; but by God's mercy many are the roads to success.' Again, in the ninth hymn of the same collection: 'Some roads lead further than others, and one single path of life will not support us all.'

There is an adage in common circulation to the effect that many hands make light work, by which they mean that even difficult tasks can be accomplished easily, if a man does not attempt the business single-handed but divides it among several helpers and assistants. It is taken from the lifting of burdens. This maxim seems to have come down to us all the way from Antiquity; for we read in Hesiod, in the book which is called Works and Days: 'More men pay more heed to the task,' and again in Homer, Iliad book 12: 'Lend me your aid; more hands do better work.' Euripides has this in mind in the Phoenissae: 'One man does not see all,' and again in the Heraclidae: The single-handed man is weak in fight.' The same point is made by one I have recorded elsewhere, 'One man, no man.'

The proverbial exaggeration To forget one's own name is used of a man with an exceptionally bad memory. Lucian in the Toxaris: 'Each one of them would forget his own father's name first.' Ovid: 'Sooner let me my proper name forget.' It is used by St Jerome too in one of his letters. Pliny in book 7 of his History of the World among examples of loss of memory recalls the case of the orator Messalla Corvinus, who even forgot his own name. Though even the dead were believed to be able for a limited time to recognize their names; and hence came the ancient practice of calling the deceased by name before bodies were put on the pyre.

Terence in the Eunuchus: 'How true indeed is that old saying, that without Ceres and Bacchus Venus grows cold.' This is put into the mouth of Chremes, a countrified young man, who hated courtesans when sober, but was by no means against them later when he had some drink inside him; for food and drink are the things that stimulate desire. The way he puts Ceres for food, Bacchus for drink, and Venus for sexual desire, maintaining the same form of expression throughout, is very neat. And the verb itself friget, grows cold, enshrines a metaphor, which Donatus says is derived from the practice of coating wine-jars with pitch, because pitch when it is cold does not stick. What a frigid and over-ingenious explanation! - with all respect to such a good scholar, if the interpretation is really his. Lovers are full of fire, and things which have lost their interest are said to cool off. Horace: 'Never again shall I be fired / By any other female form,' and husbands who are not especially fond of their wives are said to 'grow cool' towards them. St Jerome explains Terence's aphorism on rather cruder lines: 'When the stomach is distended, the parts of the body adjacent to it are distended too; we indicate that lust is greed's boon-companion.' Wine in particular arouses sexual desire, and that is why the Pauline Epistles forbid us to be 'drunk with wine, wherein is excess.' Euripides: 'When wine's not present, Venus isn't there.' In the Greek collections I find 'Without Bacchus and Ceres, Venus is a corpse.' A Cynic, quoted by Athenaeus in book 6 of the Doctors at Dinner, records the same aphorism in the following words: 'In an empty stomach there's no room for love of beauty, for the Cyprian goddess is bitter to hungry men.' And he then adds a line from Euripides, said to have been borrowed by him from Achaeus the satyric poet: 'The Cyprian? Yes, when full; when empty, no.' Athenaeus in book i of the Doctors at Dinner cites a couple of lines containing the same thought: 'Cypris loves plenty, but the unfortunate / Find Venus hard of hearing to all their prayers.' In book 10 of the same work, Aristophanes calls wine 'Venus' milk,' because it encourages desire: 'It's a sweet wine to drink, it's Venus' milk.' Here belongs an epigram of uncertain authorship:
Hunger's the cure for love; or, if that fails,
Then time. If none of these will quench your flame,
One sole resource remains, the knotted rope.
Apuleius wished to convey the same message when he represented Venus as under the influence of wine while Psyche was hungry. Though Aristotle suggests that drinking wine to excess makes men unfit for coition; wine, he says dilutes the strength of the semen, and that is why Alexander the Great was sexually so ineffective: he drank too much wine. Athenaeus tells us that this was also in Theophrastus.

Πλεύσειας εἰς τὴν Μασσαλίαν, You should take ship for Massilia. Athenaeus writes in book 12 that the people of Massilia were in old days so luxurious and effeminate, there was a common saying to this effect: You should sail to Massilia. He does not explain what the proverb means, but we can easily guess that it ought to be directed against effeminate people whose character and dress are unmanly. Plautus in the Casina: 'Where are you, you who expect to behave like a Massilian?'
Though what Plautus says would be better referred, it seems to me, to a puritan style of life, in the same way that, as Plutarch tells us in his life of Agesilaus, a severe way of life that left no scope at all for luxuries was called 'a Spartan regime.' For no city had a higher reputation than Massilia, if we can believe Cicero, and if Valerius Maximus in book 2, in the chapter on different manners of life, is speaking the truth when he gives a long account of their way of life in that city, where no mimes were allowed on the stage for fear they might undermine the moral standards of the citizens by the improper subjects represented, and none were admitted within the gates who followed an idle and useless way of life under the pretext of religion. Similar details of the strictness of the people of Massilia are found in ancient authors; so that clearly Athenaeus was thinking, not of the Massilia in Gaul but of Massilia in Libya, mentioned by Virgil in the fourth book of the Aeneid: 'Here have they told me of a sorceress, / Massylian by race.' From this passage it is permissible to suppose that the Massylians once had a great reputation for witchcraft, like the Thessalians. But since in Athenaeus it is Massalia, not Massylia, it may be that this is neither the Massilia in Narbonese Gaul nor the Massylia in Morocco, but some third place. Though these different names are sometimes confused in Greek authors. Stephanus states that there was a city of this name in Liguria, a colony of Phocaea, on the authority of Hecataeus; Timaeus adds, he says, that when some ship's captain had made land there, he caught sight of a fisherman, threw a rope to the shore, and told him to make fast, and that this is how the place got the name Massalia. For masai in Aeolic Greek is the same as the ordinary dêsai, and means to make fast, and halieus means fisherman, and the two put together give Massilia.

Πλεύσειας Τροιζῆνα, Take ship for Troezen. Eustathius in his commentary on the second book of Homer's Iliad tells us that this was said to those who, though they had no beard on the chin, wore false hair to look like a beard. It arose, he adds, from the existence of some harbour at Troezen which was commonly called Barba, the Beard. There is however a second Troezen in Massilia.

Πέμματ᾽ ἀττικὰ, Attic dainties, of delicacies and titbits. Can be transferred to anything which is beyond measure sweet and delightful. Plato in book 3 of his Republic: 'And among Attic dainties you disapprove of those that seem to you to smack of luxury.'